Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

The effect of this amendment by replacing "adults" with "persons" is to allow children to be designated as cohabitants for the purpose of the Bill. There does not appear to be any sound reason for so doing. There is an unintended effect on the Bill as initiated. The domestic violence protections which currently apply to a couple living together as husband and wife would have been removed from persons under the age of 18 years. This has been remedied by deleting on Committee Stage the domestic violence provisions from the Bill and inserting them in the civil law (miscellaneous provisions) Bill which is due to be published shortly. I made this point on Committee Stage. The miscellaneous provisions Bill will provide that it will continue to be possible for an application for a domestic violence order to be made by a person living in a couple, where one of them is over the age of consent but under the age of majority.

I will mention the only remaining provisions in Part 15 which apply to cohabitants. Section 199 extends to cohabitants a provision of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 so that a cohabitant may take over a lease of a residential property on the death of the other cohabitant. As a child does not have the legal capacity to contract, this provision could not, in any case, apply to a cohabitant under the age of 18. The other instance is under section 200, which extends to cohabitants a provision of the Civil Liability Act 1961 so that a cohabitant may seek damages in the event of the wrongful death of the other cohabitant. This measure is subject to the couple having cohabited for at least three years. Clearly, there are no circumstances in which a child should be encompassed by that provision if the relationship is "intimate and committed", as provided for in section 170(1). In these circumstances, the amendment has no effect.

The Deputy's objective in proposing this amendment may be to ensure that a couple living together since one of them was 17 will be covered by the redress provisions, if the relationship ends while that person is 22. The potentially onerous obligations - or, indeed, potential benefits - under the redress scheme should apply only to cohabitants as adults. This is because a key feature of section 198, in Part 15, is that cohabiting couples must also be able to contract out of the application to them of the redress scheme. A child cannot enter into such a contract. Therefore, cohabitation as a minor should not be included in the time period required to become a qualified cohabitant, as set out in section 169(5) of the Bill. This means that a couple who commenced cohabiting when one of them was under the age of 18 cannot be subject to those obligations until they have been cohabiting for at least five years and each of them has reached the age of 23, or, if there is a child of the relationship, that they have been cohabiting for at least two years and each of them has reached the minimum age of 20.

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