Dr. Geoffrey Shannon:

The Deputy has raised a fundamental question. At the time of the debate on the Child and Family Relationships Bill, I made that very suggestion. I stated that we must move away from these historic terms, namely, "guardianship", "custody" and "access". At the time, the reason proffered for not progressing along those lines was that it might require more ambitious constitutional change. When it comes to our family court structures, we have been talking about this since 1975. The time is right now for fundamental structural change in order to ensure that we have a system which meets the needs of every citizen in this jurisdiction. Rather than trying to create a system that will not require constitutional change, I would much prefer to see being put to the people a constitutional proposal that would allow us to be very ambitious in any new family court structure we might establish rather than having a system that we are required to create, having regard to constitutional constraints.