Mr. Liam Daly:

Obviously matters relating to coroners are outside the responsibility of the Department of Social Protection. On the arrangements whereby the civil registration service at a local level is delivered by the HSE, the General Register Office, GRO, sits within the Department of Social Protection. The system works well. We have a good system of engagement with registrars across the country. We support the necessary IT infrastructure to record births, deaths and other life events. It works well in practice. Given there is a relatively small number of registrars across the country, approximately 140, we can operate the system well and have good, open communication with them. The system we have works well.

On head 13, there were two separate pieces of legislation that referred to the Civil Registration Act. They were inserted not by the Department's legislation but by other legislation. We are proposing to try to remedy that. The first was inserted under the Marriage Act. I do not have an immediate reference to hand for the second one. Essentially, there were two conflicting definitions of a section within the Civil Registration Act. We are trying to correct that. My colleague, Mr. O'Loughlin, may be more familiar with the background to it.