Irish citizens who travel abroad for surrogacy won’t now be forced to quarantine in a hotel room upon their return.
The latest regime change was revealed before the High Court this morning as it continues to hear challenges to the operation of the system.
Ahead of an urgent hearing on behalf of an Irish couple due to return home from Ukraine tomorrow with their new baby, born by surrogate, Mr Justice Brian O’Moore was told this morning that they won’t now be required to quarantine in a hotel room.
Instead, they’ll be allowed to do so at home – an exemption that will now be rolled out for all surrogacy travel.
Their case will be mentioned again this afternoon.
At the moment, he’s dealing with separate challenges to how the system is being run on behalf of two women currently in hotel quarantine.
Their lawyers claim the system lacks an adequate review process for early release from what they described as an effective detention by State authorities.
They say factors such as prior infection history, vaccination status and negative Covid tests should feed into risk assessments much sooner than at present.
*Reporting by Frank Greaney
