Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I never thought I would say this, but I found some of the comments made by Deputy McNamara to be very interesting. I was a little afraid he was going to burst into a version of "What's Love Got To Do With It?". In fact, he raised some very interesting arguments which get to the heart of this matter. What is a marriage of convenience? What is a legal marriage? Is there such a thing as a legitimate marriage? People have many different reasons for marrying and who are we to say any of them is less valid than anybody else's? I am aware of a married couple from different countries who met over the Internet. People on the outside might look on and say it is a bit peculiar, but it seems to work for both of them and they get something out of it. I do not know what one would call it, but is it doing anybody any harm? We must be rational about this.

Clearly, there is a substantial difference between a mutual arrangement of convenience for two people who both benefit and somebody being exploited. However, there is a social argument about marriage being rooted in exploitation anyway, and the old definitions when women and children were the property of the male partner. There is no high moral ground on these issues. Dealing in trafficking and exploiting people for sexual and other purposes is completely wrong, but this does not necessarily fall under the legislation.

I thought the points made were very valid. I echo the points about same-sex marriages. There is a view that we could legislate for them. I do not believe it is controversial at all. If there is a referendum, it will be overwhelmingly carried, but do we really have to go through all that? Could we not legislate for civil partnerships for gay couples? That is something that should be looked at.

Essentially the Bill gets to the heart of people's identity, their right to an identity at birth, an acknowledgement of their existence at death and to have that properly registered. These matters are very important and I am glad to see a number of the measures included.

I want to deal with two aspects. First is the position of the compulsory registration of fathers' names. This is clearly necessary to underpin the rights of children under EU legislation in order to have access to their identity. It is a very good thing. Deputy Jim Daly made the point that this does not apply in a typical family, but that misses the point. Much of the reason for introducing this legislation now is that there is no such thing as a typical family in Ireland or elsewhere. The nuclear family of a male daddy, a female mammy and 2.3 children does not exist anymore. We have a society with 217,000 children of separated parents in the State according to the most recent census. We need to acknowledge that many of them are living in new arrangements with different half-brothers, half-sisters etc.

While I really welcome that fathers' names are being added, it does not change much for fathers. There is a gaping deficiency in fathers' rights in our system at the moment. It is a huge problem in the context of the modern family. Having a right to have one's father's name on a birth certificate does not change that or give the father any extra legal rights. This needs to be balanced. We talk about rights and responsibilities, but responsible parents - separated fathers - were substantially undermined in last year's budget by the removal of the single-parent tax credit and the changes in that being given over to the primary carer. The reality is that because the Irish courts system is based on the old traditional family model, 97% of separation cases deem the mother to be the primary carer, even in instances where there is 50:50 access.

In my area I know of one devoted father, who is separated, who had been contributing to the upbringing of his child. His ex-partner was in another arrangement with another child from a different partner. That woman wanted to share that tax allowance, recognising that she had two children from two different fathers, but it could not be done and that responsible father could not get any benefit back. We can talk about rights and responsibilities, but we need to do much more and economic policies need to back up some of the changes we are talking about recognising on paper.

The other major absence from the legislation is one that was very well articulated by Senator van Turnhout in the Seanad, which is the position of adopted people and the deficit for them in the present scenario. We know that Irish legislation prevents discrimination on many grounds. However, adopted people are not specifically excluded from discrimination. The State by its actions has actually defended practices of discriminating against adopted people. While it is good that we are dealing with this Bill to ensure that parents born today of natural parents will have full access to their identity, the legislation does nothing for adopted people, including the 52,000 adopted people many of whom are adults who still do not have a legal right to trace all the information held by the State on their identity, but also some of the children as well.

Obviously adoptions in Ireland now generally take place outside the State and involve very small numbers of people. Adoptions since the 1990s fall under the remit of the Hague convention on intercountry adoption, which in line with UN regulation guarantees the child's absolute right to identity of origin. In order for us to be compliant with the Hague convention, the UN CRC and with best practice, Ireland should make every effort to note the adopted status on a child's birth certificate. We are failing to take account of this. Obviously they should have access to their original birth certificate from their original country of origin.

All of the welfare experts agree that what happened to so many Irish people who were illegally and secretly adopted, in many cases against the wishes of their mothers, was wrong. We have had cases where birth mothers' names were not put on their birth certificates and instead the names of their adoptive parents were put down as their birth parents. We have had many instances of people only learning they were adopted when their adoptive parents died. It causes tragedy and heartache for people when their whole understanding of the person they thought they were is stood on its head. It is a crime to do that to somebody. All the welfare training shows that it is best to acknowledge children's identity straight up and deal with that as normal because there is no such thing as normal really.

Because many Irish adoptions are foreign-based adoptions, it is quite obvious that the parent is not the natural parent and that assists in dealing with these things. Why can we not have the adoptive status on the birth certificate? That would be a very good way forward. Many Irish people were denied access to their original Irish birth certificate. It is terrible that that still continues despite our ratification of the Hague convention. In Britain and other countries, people have had a right to their original birth certificate since the mid-1970s and the roof has not caved in; life has gone on and it has been fine.

The Minister for Justice and Equality when in opposition made great pronouncements about the need to protect information and the need for children to have the right to their identity. However, when she became Minister for Children and Youth Affairs many of the statements she made in opposition were stood on their head and the excuses were given as to why people could not have access to this information. It is not good enough. We are in the final months of the Government's lifetime. In the early years of it we were promised adoption information and tracing legislation. We still have not even seen the heads of a Bill despite numerous promises I have got on it. Our delay in this is based on a misinterpretation of the I. O'T v. B case and the false emphasis being placed on the privacy of the mother. We know of the stories that have come out. In many instances these women were unwilling to give up their children. In many instances they did not know and did not sign anything. They do not want their privacy protected and really what we are talking about protecting is State-enforced secrecy rather than privacy.

If we want to go forward in a proper way and deal fully with everybody's right to identity, that means everybody and it means adopted people as well - people being adopted now, but particularly the 50,000 or so adopted people who have been so sorely mistreated, many of whom came through the Magdalen laundries and so on. While we are discussing this, we also need to overhaul that closed-adoption system in order to have a level playing field and ensure that all children of the nation are cherished and recognised equally.

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