Dr. Geoffrey Shannon:

I refer to Deputy Mac Lochlainn's question about mediation. It is important to locate it within the Bill because the society sees head 63 as problematic in that there seems to be a requirement to mandate couples to attend mediation but mediation is a consensual process. We recommend that there be mandatory information sessions which bring home to couples the benefits of attending mediation. Given that mediation is a voluntary process this head flies in the face of that approach.

I agree with what the Deputy says in respect of unmarried fathers. The European Court of Human Rights has addressed this issue comprehensively and we are quite happy to supplement our submission on that. There is a wealth of jurisprudence in this area. While married couples and their children will virtually always come within the ambit of the term, the approach of the court is a functional-based analysis of intentionality. One cannot pick a fixed period such as 12 months and hope that will comply with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, ECHR. We have said in our submission that it needs to reflect the reality of different arrangements. We would suggest a broader approach. There are two options, reduce the temporal requirement to six months or remove the temporal requirement. The Law Reform Commission recommended compulsory birth registration followed by automatic guardianship rights. We wonder whether this issue should be reconsidered.