An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-06 ============================================================ Sarah O'Reilly (AON), Agricultural Panel I am concerned at what seems to be a co-ordinated effort to advance legislation even further on surrogacy without fully considering what is best for children and their long-term well-being. In fostering it has always been established that where possible the foster parents should try to facilitate and maintain a connection between the child and their biological parents. Adoptive parents are advised of the loss a child experiences through separation from their biological family. Countless studies dealing with early childhood separation highlight the trauma this can cause even in cases where a baby is separated from their mother at birth. To see a recent event on surrogacy being advertised as Babies and Bites was in very poor taste and I was glad to see it was cancelled. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-06/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:54+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-06