February 2016 NUI Galway Law School to Host Major Conference on Surrogacy

The School of Law at NUI Galway is to host a major conference on surrogacy and the law on 12 March 2016. Among the speakers is the world-leading child psychologist, Professor Susan Golombok, Director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge.

Also presenting are Dr Kirsty Horsey, an academic and member of the Surrogacy UK Working Group on Surrogacy Law Reform, and NUI Galway alumna, Deirdre Fottrell QC, who has acted in a number of leading surrogacy cases that came before the superior courts in the UK. Other speakers include Professor Deirdre Madden from UCC and Dr Andrea Mulligan, a barrister and academic.

The conference is being organised by Dr Brian Tobin, a family law expert at the School of Law, NUI Galway, who provided legal expertise on the assisted reproduction provisions contained in the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality.      

Announcing the conference, Dr Tobin stated: “Ireland has yet to enact legislation regulating surrogacy. Laws proposed in 2014 by the then Minister for Justice and Equality, Alan Shatter, were scrapped later that year as the Government felt that further consultation was required. However, there is a concern that the issue of surrogacy could lose priority. This conference is therefore timely and designed to bring together experts in the field with a view to forging a framework for the regulation of surrogacy in Ireland.”

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