Mr. Muiris O'Connor:

Our sense is that the purpose of this committee is to determine a way forward in regard to international surrogacy. Our Minister expressed an openness to incorporating conclusions of this committee in the AHR Bill on the assumption that it would not delay the AHR Bill. The three-month timeframe was comfortable when announced. It is fair enough that this is now regarded as the commencement of the three months. That pushes us very close, I wish to signal that. Our assumption was that we would have been in committee in April, this month, but the concern is that the summer recess would move us into the autumn. There is an urgency notwithstanding the long time it has taken to progress the AHR Bill. Also, it is hard to envisage providing for international surrogacy in a Bill providing assurance, safeguards and regulation of domestic surrogacy. It is not clear to us that it will be concluded that the AHR Bill is the appropriate legal instrument. There may be other legal instruments advised by this committee at the end. It may be outside of legislation that these matters and objectives set out by all contributing today are reconciled in practice rather than in law. I suspect that may be the case as we do not have jurisdiction where the surrogacy is taking place in the context of international commercial surrogacy so it is just very difficult.

The worst of all outcomes would be that we would be considerably delayed and the conclusions would not actually have relevance for the AHR Bill. We are very open and as a Department we will support this committee in our work. We set out our intention to progress as quickly as possible, certainly in advance of the summer recess, to Committee Stage. This means it may be possible but it is an ambitious timeframe and a very complex area. As Mr. McGennis said, other countries that have looked at this have not found legislative solutions.