Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

The Government fully accepts that same-sex couples and other unmarried cohabiting couples require heightened legal protection. Many cohabiting couples share property, home life and income, and want to care for one another, to be next-of-kin to each other and to be cared for in that context and to have legal rights to do so. While it is open to couples to regulate at least some aspects of their relationship by means of contract, this is a route which relatively few couples currently take. Against this backdrop it is desirable to provide legislative safeguards with mutually enforceable rights and obligations, but if we do so, we must do so in a manner which is consistent with the requirements of the Constitution.

As a society, we must give thorough consideration to what course we can and should follow in this sensitive and complex area. We must be clear on what it is we are trying to achieve. Do we wish to provide specific rights to cohabiting couples and confer the protection of the law on those rights? If so, what rights do we wish to give, and how do we confer them?

The House will be aware that I established a widely representative working group under the chairmanship of Anne Colley to report on the various options on domestic partnership. The options paper was published in November 2006 and in the following month, December 2006, the Law Reform Commission report on rights and duties of cohabitants became available. These two reports are very valuable pieces of work which are currently being considered in my Department and legislative proposals are being drafted. The commission considers it appropriate to have a tiered approach which incorporates each of these models, status and registration type models. It recommends the use of a contract model and a redress model as the basis for reform in addressing the rights and duties of cohabitants.

The Law Reform Commission report left aside registration on the basis that the working group on domestic partnership was considering this along with a range of other options. The options paper describes some such schemes in detail. Both the options paper and the Law Reform Commission report correctly note that if an opt-in registration scheme was made available, the needs of cohabiting couples who choose not to register or marry would not be addressed unless other modes of protection were put in place. This Bill fails to address that point.

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