Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Shortall for the proposed amendment. I do not have a policy view on this at all. We want to do what is legally robust. We want to be cognisant that these proceedings can come at great expense to parents and at great inconvenience to parents who have already been through so much to have a surrogacy in the first place. We have looked at this up and down. We have gone back to the Attorney General. We have asked and probed. The very clear and consistent advice we have received from the Office of the Attorney General is that because the constitutional right is with the birth mother and we are severing that constitutional link, those who want to do this will have to go to the High Court. That is it. That is the only reason we are doing it like this. It has become established practice in other cases. For example, when a biological father is seeking parental recognition, he goes to the High Court. There would be a question under donor-assisted human reproduction whether they could even go to the District Court and they are using the High Court as well. The reason here is based purely on legal advice from the Attorney General.

I am conscious that going to the High Court is a very expensive thing for parents, or for anybody, to do. We will not have a situation where any parent, parents or children cannot go to the High Court for financial reasons. I want to make that very clear. We have not worked out a scheme but we will work out a scheme. It will involve a very modest amount of money in the grand scheme of things. No child or parent will be left in a situation where they cannot, as soon as the courts can facilitate it, access those courts with whatever legal advice or representation they need. Whether that is the State paying in situations where parents cannot afford it or through some subsidy, we will work that through. No child or parent will be left outside on a cost basis of going to the courts.

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