Stringent safeguards must be incorporated into any legislation governing surrogacy to ensure babies are not being bought and sold, an international expert on child exploitation has warned.

Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, former UN special rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children, told the Oireachtas Committee on International Surrogacy the only payment made to a surrogate mother by “commissioning parents” should be to cover the costs of pregnancy and birth, and these costs should be itemised.

Any payment beyond that would amount to the “sale of a child” and would be a crime under international human rights law, she said.

She told committee members, who are examining how best to legislate for surrogacy which remains unregulated here, they had “an enormous responsibility” to ensure women in poorer countries and the children they bore were not exploited.