Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I hope my amended proposal will still be in line with the report of the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution which was endorsed by this House in May 2003, and will be consistent with the Good Friday Agreement. Deputy Ó Caoláin will accept that I must secure a consensus on the matter. I am trying to frame a proposal that sticks with those principles and I am not abandoning it, but I must take account of the views of the parties. It has been rightly suggested to me that I implement the recommendations of the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution report and that is what I am trying to do.

The All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution report did not command the agreement of all of the committee, though it did in many areas, but I commend its work. A minority of members opposed to the present wording of the Constitution asserted, as the Deputy did, that all persons have a right to family life irrespective of their marital status, and they provided an alternative wording as an amendment to Article 41. This would mean that the present constitutional protection for the traditional family based on marriage would be extended to include all family forms. According to the minority, the justification for this is that while the traditional family is still the predominant feature of our society there are growing numbers of other forms including co-habitating heterosexual couples, co-habitating same-sex couples and lone parents, which of course is correct. The fundamental question faced by the majority of the committee was whether constitutional protection should be extended to all family forms. The traditional family based on marriage has self-evidently produced great benefits to society over a sustained period, has given social stability and has provided a favourable context in which to rear children. Many people believe that to dilute that protection given to the family based on marriage in the Constitution would jeopardise the common good.

The majority view in the committee was that a referendum that proposed to define the family would be very divisive. Having created division it might not carry majority support. Rather than put the community through that type of campaign the committee decided to examine whether the problems presented in the submissions might be dealt with by a combination of other, less divisive, constitutional and legislative measures. As I said on the launch of the report I agree with that approach, though I understand the arguments on both sides. We have now set up the committee and we will work on areas of agreement. We will try to deal with the issue in a legislative way. That work has commenced.

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