MORE THAN 20 queries in relation to surrogate births have been made to solicitor Marion Campbell in the past six months, prompting her to organise a seminar on the issue which was held last night.
"My interest started in the last year when more and more clients came looking for advice," she told The Irish Timesahead of the conference, hosted by the Family Lawyers Association.
As well as the queries that came to her office, a meeting on Tuesday night for prospective parents attracted about 50 people, the majority of whom were heterosexual couples, but including some gay people, she said.
“Some of them are considering surrogate options either here, in Ukraine, India or the US,” she said. “Here it would usually be a sister or close relative. But the problem is the birth mother’s name goes on the birth certificate. If the surrogate is married, her husband is legally the father.
“You would then have to go down the road of getting the birth certificate amended. As family lawyers we would all have had cases where the husband was not the biological father, and you would have DNA tests and amended the birth certificate. But we never had a case where a birth mother was changed to reflect the true situation.”
Where a child was born to a surrogate in another jurisdiction there were problems getting the child back into the country, and problems with its passport, she added. She said it was very difficult and hugely expensive to sort all this out.
“An approach would have to be made to the High Court, and there would probably be an appeal to the Supreme Court. The Attorney General would have to be joined, along with the registrar of births, marriages and deaths.
“The only people who could afford it would be those who were legally aided, or with huge resources.
“People are saying the need to have a child is so intense they will borrow or remortgage to go to the US to have a child through a surrogate.”
Dr Gerard Byrne, consultant child psychiatrist, told the seminar there was no research on the effects of surrogacy on the child.
However, he said research showed that contracting parents in surrogacies showed greater warmth and greater enjoyment of parenthood than did natural-conception parents.
The fathers were more satisfied with their parental roles, and it seemed that surrogacy resulted in a more positive experience of parenting than conception by natural methods.
A possible explanation was that such children were extremely wanted children, who were being raised by highly committed and loving parents, he said.
Bronagh O’Hanlon SC told the seminar that, while surrogacy was not illegal in the UK, surrogacy agreements were unenforceable in the courts there, and it was a criminal offence to advertise either for a surrogate mother, or offering such services.
US lawyer John Weltman, co-founder of the Circle Surrogacy agency which has helped a number of Irish couples and who addressed the seminar, told The Irish Timeslast month the process takes an average of 12-15 months from signing on to delivery of the baby, and costs in the range of $70,000-$120,000 (€52,000- €89,000).