Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

——than they are to the views I know Deputy Cuffe holds. The truth is the Green Party has been sold a pup and been outwitted on the issue. The commitments his party have received are virtually meaningless and are actually a retreat from what was on offer from the then Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, former Deputy, Michael McDowell, in February 2007. At that time the Minister sought a deferral of Second Stage for a period of six months with a view to enabling a more comprehensive approach to the question of civil partnership to be adopted by this House.

If passed, the Government amendment on this occasion, to which Deputy Cuffe has subscribed, will simply kill off the Labour Party Bill and kick the issue into the indefinite future. I heard Deputy Cuffe trying to explain this issue on the radio this morning. He sought to take credit on behalf of his party for the production of the heads of a Bill by next March. He sought to represent that as somehow a great victory on this issue. Either he is being incredibly naive in selling that line to the public or he is simply trying to sell on the pup he himself has been sold.

If the March deadline is so significant then why is it not included in the Government amendment? Anyone with even a passing knowledge of how the legislative system works knows there can be a significant interval between the heads of a Bill being agreed and the legislation being published, never mind being enacted. I draw Deputy Cuffe's attention to one example. The Ombudsman (Amendment) Bill is on the Government's current legislative programme. The heads of the Bill were agreed in autumn 2003. This is autumn 2007 and the Bill has yet to be published, much less to be enacted.

I understand how parties operate in a coalition government. One has to accommodate to the agenda of one's Government partners in the manner expressed in the House by Deputy Mansergh earlier today. The Green Party made a fatal parliamentary mistake. The amendment that should have been brought before the House was an amendment to restore the Labour Party Bill to the Order Paper and then do whatever it was the party wanted to do about Committee Stage. If the real position is that the party is preparing to introduce its own Bill on which the Attorney General has to give advice and all the complicated matters to which Deputy Cuffe alluded yesterday, then it could have been decided not to set a date for Committee Stage but the Labour Party Bill would have been restored to the Order Paper.

In restoring the Labour Party Bill to the Order Paper the Green Party would have strengthened its own hand in Government if its position was to ensure a Bill would be produced. Deputy Cuffe has been codded by his partners into killing off the Labour Party Bill because it does not appear to me there is a genuine interest on the part of the Green Party's partners in Government to bring this legislation forward.

The Green Party has also been codded in respect of all we have heard about other forms of partnerships and the Colley report. We are told the Government legislation for civil partnerships will now include cohabiting brothers and sisters. I fully recognise there is an issue to be addressed in terms of taxation and inheritance in such circumstances but I insist — and my party insists — that this is not the issue for this debate or this Bill.

The Government says it will draw on the Colley options paper and the recommendations of the Law Reform Commission on the rights of cohabitants. However, there is one basic, fundamental fact that is fully recognised in the Colley paper but which the Government still refuses to recognise; there are heterosexual couples who wish to cohabit and there are gay couples who wish to cohabit. There are also heterosexual couples who wish to marry and there are gay couples who wish to marry. The heterosexual couples have an option but gay couples do not. The Colley group recognised this point and the Colley proposals are in stark contrast to the Government proposals.

What Ms Colley and her group said was that full civil partnership for same-sex couples, in contrast with opposite-sex couples, should be viewed as a distinct institution, separate from and not competing with marriage. The Colley group believed that full civil partnership for same-sex couples did not suffer the same constitutional vulnerability as full civil partnership for opposite-sex couples. What Colley said — and I would imagine the Attorney General would concur — is that if equivalence is given to cohabiting couples who could get married but decide not to, as is given to married couples, then the institution of marriage is arguably being attacked and undermined. However, as her group and our Bill recognises, if one is giving legal recognition to same-sex couples who cannot constitutionally marry, then what injury is being done to the concept of marriage?

The Bill is proposed on an analysis that accords with the observations of the Colley group. We propose a civil registration scheme which extends the full range of rights and duties of marriage for same-sex couples. We agree, as they did, that there are no obvious additional benefits to introducing an alternative to marriage in the form of civil registration for opposite-sex couples, apart from offering a marriage-identical commitment without the marriage title to couples who object to marriage per se. We agree, as the group did, that introducing such an alternative for opposite-sex couples is vulnerable to constitutional challenge. Like the working group, we are not convinced that there are many cohabiting opposite-sex couples who are unwilling to marry but may be willing to enter a registration scheme which has all the attendant obligations of marriage.

Our Bill is underpinned by one single overriding principle, the principle of equality.

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