New legislation to facilitate the market in international commercial surrogacy should lessen concerns about the potential sale of children and the exploitation of woman, by steering people to countries “at the more ethical end of things”, according to a UCC law lecturer.

Prof Conor O’Mahony who wrote a report on surrogacy for the Government in 2020 as the special rapporteur on child protection said the European Court of Human Rights has made it clear that countries such as Ireland “must provide a pathway to parentage, a pathway to recognition of family relationships where surrogacy takes place, using international surrogacy arrangements, and if we were to leave this out of the legislation we would be risking violation of the Convention”.

Speaking on Radio 1, he said: “When we legislate here to recognise surrogacy abroad we can set down minimum conditions around what types of international surrogacy arrangements we are comfortable to recognise here in Ireland.

“So if there are concerns around potential sale of children, if there are concerns around potential exploitation of surrogate mothers and so on, we can build in safeguards into that law, that essentially if someone coming to Ireland having engaged in international surrogacy, would have to apply to the court and satisfy the court, that certain minimum conditions have been met, so that only arrangements which we can stand over from a legal and ethical perspective would be eligible for recognition here and that would in turn essentially channel people to locations where the practice is at the more ethical end of things, rather than countries where, perhaps, there are more concerns around unethical practices”.