Ms Saoirse Brady:

We support Treoir's call for unmarried fathers who are not cohabiting to be recognised. We are talking about the small number of cases where women might experience violence from an abusive partner or where children are born of rape. The Rape Crisis Network Ireland publishes statistics on the number of children born of rape. In 2011 it was 90, and in 48 of those cases the girls or women chose to keep and parent the child. In those cases one would have to be very careful about granting automatic guardianship rights to fathers who have not cohabited. We have not looked in depth at how one could do that. The National Women's Council and Women's Aid might be better placed to give the committee advice on how one might protect those people.