On Tuesday, RTE aired a documentary in which a gay man examined his options as to how to become a father.

The programme, Gay Daddy, followed TV presenter Darren Kennedy as he examined the possible routes by which he could become a father. But it is fair to say that it did not really examine any of the profound ethical issues raised by the subject.

Instead, the overwhelming focus of the programme was whether Kennedy himself would be happy having children with his father, and the obvious difficulties he faced in having a child.

One of the problems that received almost no attention was the issue of having a child being intentionally deprived of a mother.

Kennedy spoke to one girl, Lorelei, whose parents were married until she was six, at which point they spilit up. Her father came out as a homosexual.

She said that her father’s sexuality made no difference to her upbringing or her relationship with her father. However, the programme did not make clear whether she had lived most of the time with her mother or father in that time. It was not claimed that she was raised by two gay men. One was left with the distinct impression that Lorelei knew both of her biological parents.

In any case, the example was highly anecdotal, like speaking to one person who coped well with their parents divorce.

The programme looked at the options open to Mr Kennedy if he wanted to be a father. These were surrogacy, fostering, adoption and co-parenting.

The programme did suggest that surrogacy was expensive (a price of €100,000 was quoted) and legally complicated, but didn’t examine any of the ethical issues surrounding it, such as the issue of the potential exploitation of the women involved.

It spoke to Marian Campbell, a legal expert who criticised the Irish law for not explicitly allowing surrogacy, but it did not speak to any opponents of legal surrogacy.

They spoke to a clinic in the UK about the option of surrogacy whereby the mother would be both the gestational and genetic mother of the child. The programme also mentioned the creation of embryos, but glided over the fact that the process involved the creation of surplus embryos.

The programme also failed to address the ethical issue of the “splitting” of motherhood in the case where the surrogate mother is purely the gestational mother, and another mother is the genetic mother. In Kennedy’s case the child wouldn’t be raised by either mother.

In all, the programme’s focus, in general, was on the problems facing a gay man if he wanted to have a child. Beyond a glancing references to a child whose father was gay, there was no real questioning of what it would be like to be raised by two parents of the same sex. And nobody asked the question as to what it would be like to be raised not knowing who your biological father or mother is.

Perhaps RTE should now commission a separate programme, interviewing people like Dr Joanna Rose, who was conceived by donor sperm, and who cannot access information about her genetic father because the law at the time allowed the sperm donor in question to remain annonymous. Then we might have the chance to present all sides of this controversial issue equally and have a proper, informed debate.