Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The purpose of section 8 is to clarify the position arising from the enactment of the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act 2010. One of the measures included in the Bill, which we have not debated extensively because everybody strongly agrees with it, is the introduction of parallel entitlements and changes in the social welfare system for those who enter a civil partnership arrangement following the enactment of the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act 2010. We have a series of changes in the social welfare code to cater for the introduction of civil partnership in the Bill and most Deputies would welcome civil partnership, including, I assume, Deputy Higgins. The main impact for social welfare customers is that from 1 January 2011 the social welfare code has recognised all same-sex cohabiting couples, not just those who opt to register a civil partnership. This is necessary from an equality perspective as the social welfare code already recognises opposite-sex cohabiting couples.

One of the legislative amendments required to give effect to the recognition of civil partnerships in the case of recipients of the pre-retirement allowance was inadvertently given the same legislative reference as an existing provision of the scheme. To clarify the position, section 8 re-enacts the civil partnership amendment under a new legislative reference and reaffirms the existing provisions of the scheme. The existing provision related to a standard condition that applies to means-tested social assistance payments in general where both partners of a couple claim a social assistance payment in their own right. For example where one partner of a couple claims pre-retirement allowance and the other one claims another social assistance payment, such as jobseeker's allowance, the total amount to the couple is limited to the appropriate married rate, which has been a standard provision in social welfare for a long period. It is half of the amount that would be payable if only one partner of the couple claimed and received an increase for the other person as a qualified adult. It simply extends the structure of recognising cohabiting and married couples of opposite sexes to people in same-sex relationships.

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