Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

Like Deputy Twomey, I wish the Ceann Comhairle, Members and staff a good summer. I promise that the Labour Party will return completely energised and ready to give the Government more grief on our return in the autumn. As I recall the Civil Registration Bill was published in 2003 and we had a full debate on it in 2004. It is hard to justify having to amend an Act that has not even commenced even though it was passed by the Houses of the Oireachtas 18 months ago. Yet again we have flawed legislation that needed to return to the House to be amended and made workable. Again the Department of Health and Children has got it wrong. The most dramatic previous example related to the nursing home charges, which was struck down by the Supreme Court.

This morning the Minister for Finance indicated, as was stated in reply to a parliamentary question, that the legal advice as agreed by the Attorney General indicated that this Bill needed to be amended. However, it is not clear when the Minister received that legal advice. As I said, regardless of how small the Bill, it is not good practice for us to have a debate within 24 hours of a Bill being published. It certainly makes it impossible for us to comply with the recommendation from the Ceann Comhairle that amendments be tabled four days in advance. When the Minister of State replies I would like him to advise exactly when that legal advice was received. Was it necessary to wait until the 11th hour on the final day of the Dáil session to deal with this matter?

The Minister of State needs to realise that this kind of ineptitude has an effect on people's lives. It is not as if nobody is affected by this matter. I can cite one example of the distress that is caused by such a long delay. People who wish to register their children have had difficulties. In one case an unmarried woman had a child, who was registered in her name. This woman subsequently married the father of the child. At this stage, the father had divorced his first wife. The father and mother got married, but the child was still registered in the mother's name. When they sought to re-register the child, they were told that they would not be allowed to do so until this new Act commenced. Their only option was to adopt the child. They were quite reasonable in saying that they did not want to do this and that it was a ridiculous demand, as both of them are the natural parents of the child in question.

This is very upsetting. This child will go to school on 1 September 2005 with a surname that is no longer appropriate. His parents have a different surname to him. This child is not alone as there is a queue of people waiting to regularise their situation. They have been put in a very invidious position. That is why I tabled the amendment to the Bill, which regrettably, has been ruled out of order. We are back in the House to discuss legislation that has taken 18 months to be published. I will re-iterate some of the concerns groups had with the original Act. One of these groups was Treoir, which provides services and support for unmarried parents.

There was a missed opportunity in the original Act, in that it did not allow for the setting up of a system of registering joint guardianship agreements. These are statutory agreements that unmarried couples can sign in the presence of a peace commissioner or commissioner for oaths, agreeing to joint guardianship of their child, as unmarried mothers have sole rights in law and fathers have no automatic rights. There is no obligation on the peace commissioner or commissioner of oaths to record such agreements. There is no central register for such agreements. A facility for registering such agreements should be included in the Civil Registration (Amendment) Bill.

More than one third of children are born outside marriage and many of the fathers of these children rely on such agreements to acquire and prove guardianship rights of their children. In case of a dispute between parents, the only record is a copy of the document and if this is mislaid, there is no way of establishing that such an agreement was made. Therefore there is currently nowhere to register centrally the statutory agreement between guardians and that puts them in a precarious position because if it is lost, the document is essentially irreplaceable. It is a reflection of the lack of status in which fathers' rights are held that there is no central register for these forms. The 2004 Act did not address this and in that sense was a lost opportunity.

Despite the changes in society, our laws have been slow to reflect these changes. The Irish courts interprets "the family" to be confined to families based on marriage. Although parents who are not married do not benefit from the rights enunciated in Articles 41 and 42 of the Constitution, it has been held that children born outside wedlock have the same natural and imprescriptable rights as children born within marriage. However, the courts have held that in a number of instances, it is permissible to treat children born outside marriage differently to those born to a married couple. The non-marital family is effectively outside of constitutional protection and an unmarried cohabiting couple cannot acquire full rights, no matter how stable or continuous their relationship.

Guardianship is the most significant right a parent can have in respect of a child. It is essential that a central register of joint guardianship agreements is initiated. I urge that this issue be considered as an amendment to the Act at some point. We must be conscious that, in light of the changes in the family in our society, there is work being done by the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution to provide safeguards for all families. Our mission should be to promote equality, acceptance and understanding, regardless of the form the family takes.

There are further ramifications due to the long awaited execution of provisions set out in the Act. For instance, there are many people who would have wanted a wider choice on where they may marry and they certainly have been let down by these long delays. Instead of the imagined romantic settings promised to them, couples who have opted out of a conventional church wedding have had to marry in the very often cramped, indifferent and distinctly unromantic surroundings of health board offices.

Regarding the much delayed implementation of the Act, it is reasonable to assume that the decentralisation of the General Register Office to Roscommon in April 2004, with the exception of its research facility, may well have added unduly to the delay. This is a further indication that the whole decentralisation programme was ill conceived by the Government and was certainly driven by electoral consideration, although not very successfully. It is not unreasonable to question the efficiency of the hand-over and the knock on effect this had. I do not wish to disregard the immense work done by the staff and I join the Minister in paying tribute to them. However, the implementation of the Act has been delayed for so long that one must question the reasons for that.

While this Bill is short and technical, I hope that the Minister reflects on the comments made here today and I urge that this Act, in part or in whole, be implemented without delay. In answer to a recent parliamentary question on this, the Minister stated that the date for the new marriage procedures will be as late as the autumn of 2006, two years after the passing of the Act. Dates for the implementation of the other provisions, relating to the registration of adoptions, divorces and civil nullity have not been given and the Minister only gave a general commitment in his speech. It is unacceptable to have that kind of open-ended arrangement when people are being affected in very practical ways, be it with regard to the registration of a child, the guardianship of a child, adoption or marriage. It is regrettable that it has taken so long but we still cannot set a date — in accordance with my amendment, which has been disallowed — so that the child to whom I referred earlier may be secure this autumn in the knowledge that he is carrying the same name as his parents.

See this speech in context