Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

It would. I understood that what the Minister intended by putting in paragraph (a) was the normal prohibition on marrying, which exists for good reasons. One cannot marry people who are closely related or those under a certain age. "Consanguinity, affinity or other relationships" comprised the marriage ban that used to be read out in church. These are the legal impediments normal to marriage. However, the Minister has used the bald phrase, "would be prohibited from marrying", to capture all of that and in doing so he has also captured the constitutional prohibition we have in the interpretation of marriage by the Supreme Court as prohibiting the marriage of same sex couples.

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