Professor Deirdre Madden:

I will be brief as I know we are up against the clock. My conclusion is we cannot and should not ignore the reality of international surrogacy. We cannot require the laws of other countries where surrogacy takes place to be the same as ours. We must prioritise the rights and welfare of children, the surrogate but also the intended parents, because sometimes their interests and potential vulnerabilities are not prioritised in the same way. We speak much about protection of surrogates but we must also have in mind the well-being of intended parents, who may have struggled for years to have a family and prepared in every way possible to become parents. Their interests also deserve protection.

The best solution to my mind is to try to ensure the domestic system we have encourages people to stay here and have their surrogacy arrangement done here. At the same time, we must recognise that this will not apply to everybody. Some parents may want the surrogate to be somebody of the same ethnicity as them, for example, and they may wish for the child to be born in their country of origin. Of course, they could have a family member or friend living abroad who is willing to be a surrogate for them. Just because the process takes place internationally does not necessarily mean it is commercial in the sense we have been talking about here.

The mechanism by which we do something could be a pre-approval process by a regulator on the basis of an approved list of countries, perhaps, where the regulator has done due diligence, for example, and is satisfied the legal protections are as close as they are to those in Ireland. Once all the legal criteria are satisfied in the country where the child is born - this may require a judicial process in that country - and the parents return to Ireland with the child, recognition of parentage could be given via court order. I am not sure if that answers the Deputy's question.