Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am not suggesting that. I certainly do not think that criminal law should be introduced into the family law area. I am concerned about the circumstance where, whether it is the mother or the father, one of them is misbehaving and creating an enormous difficulty with regard to access issues. On occasions fathers create enormous difficulties for custodial mothers by not complying with access arrangements or using them to try to turn the child against the mother. I have seen every combination of this. What I am saying is that what we have in the Bill allowing the courts to require people to attend parental counselling, allowing the courts to require people to attend family counselling, all of this is a great advance and very important but when those individuals whom the court directs to do this do not co-operate, the court needs some sanction and there is no reason why, for example, the court should not have the capacity to prescribe stand-alone community service. It is not about a criminal offence. It is a sanction instead of committal to prison for contempt of court. It is not even a substitute for that, it is not asking the courts to commit anyone to prison.

There should be sensible, stand-alone sanctions that do not damage the parent-child relationship and which are pragmatic and workable in circumstances where people do not have much in the way of available funds and where imposing a fine may not be a practical sanction. The courts need some form of sanction in order that, instead of judges urging people who are obstinate and intent on using their children as pawns in an ongoing relationship battle, they can tell those parents that if they do not conduct themselves properly they can do X. At the moment there is not an X which they can do. The only X available is parental or family counselling or making good the cost of attending where access was not granted, but if that does not work, what happens next?