Domestic surrogacy will also be green-lit, though the Government denies that it is recognising commercial surrogacy at home. However, it will allow surrogate mothers to receive ‘reasonable expenses’ and this can amount to commercial surrogacy in practice because of the size of the payments involved.

In Europe, only Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine allow commercial surrogacy contracts.

Minister Donnelly said: “The policy and draft outline legislative proposals approved by Government today have the potential to provide hundreds of Irish families with a route to formal recognition by the State of the surrogacy arrangements they have undertaken, or will undertake, in other jurisdictions.”

He said they had endeavoured to implement – in so far as possible and appropriate – the proposals of the Special Joint Oireachtas Committee on International Surrogacy and have accepted the majority of the committee’s recommendations.