Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I said during the Second Stage debate, the very question raised by the Deputy was extensively discussed and extensive legal advice on it was sought. I will just go over the detail of the policy again and maybe add a little extra to what I said previously. The policy based on the new constitutional context is that civil partnership registration will cease after a reasonably short period of transition. As the Deputy knows, section 8 of this Bill repeals most of Part 7A of the Civil Registration Act 2004, which had set out the basis for registration of civil partnerships. The status of current civil partners remains completely unchanged. I think we are all very clear about that. There is no question of removing any of the rights and obligations of civilly partnered couples or of changing their status in regard to each other. They will be free to marry each other if they so choose, or to remain as civil partners.

I would like to say a little more about the legal advice I have received. I have been advised that it would not be constitutional to keep civil partnership available and to open it to opposite-sex couples as this would create a risk of making civil partnership a potential competitor to marriage. All of the advice I have makes it clear that making a marriage-like relationship available would violate the constitutional pledge to "guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded, and to protect it against attack". The legal advice I have is that civil partnership was legally and constitutionally justifiable because same-sex couples did not have the opportunity to marry. Now that same-sex couples can marry, the rationale for civil partnership as a distinct institution has disappeared. Accordingly, civil partnership is being wound down. The State is constitutionally prevented from making an alternative legal relationship available to couples, even though some might wish to become civil partners rather than marrying. That is the legal advice I have. This is an obvious question that arises. One has to consider it from a constitutional point of view. I have set out the advice that is shaping what we are doing in the Bill in relation to the future of civil partnership. It is very much based on advice relating to the role of marriage in the Constitution.