Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 3:

In page 22, to delete lines 20 and 21.

This group of nine amendments relates to issues arising from the death of an intending parent in a surrogacy agreement. Amendment No. 3 deletes a cross-reference to provisions later in the Bill in section 53(3) which relate to a surviving intending parent in a surrogacy agreement applying for a parental order as a single intending parent when the other intending parent dies after the relevant embryo transfer takes place. Amendment No. 33 replaces section 53(3) with a requirement in a specified form of a domestic surrogacy agreement that in the case of two intending parents, each needs to indicate that he or she understands that if one of them dies before the relevant embryo transfer takes place, any approval granted by the regulatory authority to that agreement will be immediately revoked. This is because the application would have been made and the approval granted on the basis that there were two intending parents. Amendment No. 34 basically confirms this position.

Amendments Nos. 53 and 54 mirror amendments Nos. 33 and 34 in respect of international surrogacy. However, there is a possibility that the surviving intending parent could at least potentially reapply for approval from the regulatory authority as a single intending parent when their partner dies before the embryo transfer has taken place with the proposed use of the same embryo as long as the surviving intending parent has a genetic link.

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