Commercial surrogacy in other countries has resulted in “exploitation” and children being given to parents with whom they had no genetic link, the Department of Justice has warned.

The practice is banned in most countries across the world. Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and a small number of American states allow it. Hundreds of couples from Ireland have flown to countries like Ukraine in order to have children borne for them by Ukrainian women.

Andrew Munro of the Department of Justice told an Oireachtas committee that there are concerns about commercial surrogacy.

“We have seen some very difficult examples in the past where, to be fair, intending parents were trying to do the right thing … a lot of people got exploited by bad actors, where the egg that was purportedly supplied by a purported donor was not the egg. The child given to the intending parents had no genetic link,” Mr Munro said.

He added that there had been cases where the surrogate mother was “spirited away over a border immediately after birth,” or a birth certificate provided by local authorities “named one of the intending fathers as a father despite having no genetic material.”

“And you can see how the surrogate mother and the child and the intending parents were exploited because of weak public administration in a country,” Mr Munro said.