Government urged to bring in surrogacy laws

The Government needs to recognise modern fertility tourism and legislate for surrogacy, to avoid surrogate children being left abandoned, parentless, and stateless.

Several legal experts said the lack of legislation for surrogacy was an issue that needed to be addressed by the State as a matter of urgency.

Irish law currently has no provision for surrogacy.

As a result, couples have had difficulties obtaining passports and travel documents when bringing children back to Ireland. In some cases, children have been left stateless.

Early this year, Justice Minister Alan Shatter issued a guidance document outlining the situation regarding surrogacy under Irish law and said he was examining the need for updated legislation in the area.

Chairing a UCC Law Society conference on surrogacy, senior law lecturer Deirdre Madden said there were ethical issues around surrogacy which needed to be examined before legislating, but the issue was not going to go away and could not be adequately regulated through existing legislation.

“The existing rules on parenthood in Ireland leave children vulnerable because neither of the intended parents has automatic status as a parent at birth,” she said.

“They cannot be held responsible for the child and they have no authority to make decisions about the child’s welfare.”

She said the trend of modern fertility tourism needed to be recognised and legislated for accordingly.

“The international conflicts of law leave children born abroad through surrogacy extremely vulnerable. They are potentially abandoned, parentless, and stateless in a foreign country or living in Ireland with uncertain legal status. I think Irish law needs to recognise the realities of modern fertility tourism.

“According to media reports, there are at least 30 Irish couples who are currently in a situation having children born in other jurisdictions through surrogacy and having difficulty trying to have their parental rights established here. The future for surrogacy is it’s not going to go away.”

Barrister Caroline Lindsay-Poulsen said that except when the father was genetically related to the child, the only way for commissioning couples to legalise parenthood was through adoption and that this was unlikely to be granted due to provisions within the Hague Convention and the Adoption Act 2010 which do not sit well with surrogacy.

“The Oireachtas is going to have to legislate in this area as not to do so will leave children in a legal limbo. Most of the people who go through surrogacy do so to try and have a child and continue their own genetic lines and they don’t realise the problems they are going to be faced with when they get the child back to Ireland.”