Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this very substantial legislation. There is a huge amount of work for any Department in preparing legislation of this magnitude and credit is due to the Department officials, to Deputy Alan Shatter in his period as Minister for Justice and Equality, and to the Minister, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald.

Unfortunately, since the recent publication of the Bill, I have had not the opportunity to spend as much time studying the legislation or the supporting documentation and briefing notes we received from various interest groups and stakeholders as I would like. I am sure that is the position with many other colleagues in the House. Our daily routine, whether through the normal working week or at weekends, gives us very little time to do substantial work on researching important legislation such as the Bill before us. I regret the Bill was not published earlier. As colleagues on all sides of the House have said, legislation of this magnitude needs to have very detailed consideration in the House.

Regardless of that, I hope the Minister will be able to ensure that adequate and detailed consideration is given to amendments that may be put forward by Opposition parties, such as those our party spokesperson, Deputy Niall Collins, will be putting forward on our behalf. I am sure this legislation will be impacting on many families for many decades to come. In that respect, both Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann must be able to give these proposed legislative measures the detailed consideration they merit. As Deputy Niall Collins and other Fianna Fáil Party colleagues have stated in their contributions, it is a Bill our party is supporting. Putting the interests of the child as the central consideration in family law is essential. It must be incumbent on society and on all of us as individuals to ensure that children are treated equally, no matter what their family background.

There are many good reasons to implement the measures in this legislation. I think it is readily acknowledged that families are far more complex today than existing legislation recognises. There is an imperative to change legislation in that respect and, indeed, many non-traditional, loving family units are not protected or supported by current laws. I sincerely hope the enactment of this legislation, with some considered amendments, will provide that support and protection for all family units.

The most recent census carried out in 2011 provides a massive wealth of material on the changed household composition in our State. That census clearly indicates that families are increasingly diverse and that an increasing percentage of children are living in family units other than those headed traditionally by married parents. We should consider the following data from that census. There were 215,315 lone parent households in 2011 and 17,378 lone parents were living in multi-family households. There were 4,042 same-sex couples living together in 2011. Some 66% of the 115,046 divorced or separated women were living with their children. There were 49,005 households of cohabiting couples with children under 15 years of age. The number of children living in households headed by cohabiting couples increased by 41% between 2006 and 2011. The vital statistics data of the Central Statistics Office confirm that the number of children being born outside of marriage or civil partnership was 25,190 in 2011 and 25,344 in 2012, and I presume there is little variance in the 2013 and 2014 statistics for births.

We in the Oireachtas had the opportunity in 2010 to support the Adoption Bill, which was other important and reforming legislation. Again, the statistics are interesting in respect of adoption, and they show that, from 1953 to date, 44,158 adoptions have been granted in this State. I understand that last year, 112 domestic adoptions orders were granted by the Adoption Authority of Ireland and an additional 34 inter-country adoptions also took place last year.

I believe the proposed legislation, in seeking to put children at the heart of family law, will provide legal clarity around various family types and address discrimination faced by children in non-marital families. Such discrimination is not tolerable and the State must ensure every support through its legislation and regulations to deal with such issues. It is expected that the new measures will contribute significantly to a reduction in the number of cases going before the courts. We are all well aware of the extra pressures on families and individuals when cases are before the courts and of the very contentious manner in which many cases conclude.

We can see this is a very complex issue when we consider all the areas to be addressed, including guardianship, access, custody, maintenance, adoption and parentage. I heard some of my colleagues refer to the need for amendments in regard to vindicating the rights of unmarried fathers, and Deputy Niall Collins will be bringing forward amendments in that respect which I believe will improve the legislation as published.

We have one of the longest-serving written constitutions, Bunreacht na hÉireann, which was enacted by the people in 1937. I believe it was the first written constitution in a democracy that was put to a referendum of the people and enacted by the people through a popular vote.

Bunreacht na hÉireann places great importance on the family and defines it as "[T]he natural, primary and fundamental unit group of Society" in Article 41. This was interpreted by the courts as meaning marital families only. By that interpretation grandparents, unmarried fathers, lone parents, civil partners and cohabiting couple are all excluded from this definition.

We all know that an increasing number of children are being cared for in non-marital settings and the statistics, to which Deputies Mattie McGrath and Pat Breen referred, are indisputable. Some one in four children live with lone mothers and almost one in five live with unmarried cohabiting couples. Within our current legislative framework, there is no mechanism whereby the unmarried parents' relationship with the child is recognised. This can have a very serious and negative impact on day-to-day parenting. We often hear of instances where difficulties arise in regard to the necessary consent being given for a child for medical treatment or participation in extra-curricular school activities that take him or her away from his or her immediate school environment.

The importance of this Bill and the need to get it right is very evident when one considers the number of important Acts which will be amended. I note the repeal of one Act in its entirety, namely, the Guardianship of Infants Act 1964. The other Acts that will be amended were milestone legislative measures at the time of their enactment and include the Family Law (Maintenance of Spouses and Children) Act 1976, the Status of Children Act 1987, the Family Law Act 1995, the Children Act 1987, the Adoption Act 2010 and the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act 2010.

I am glad that the further implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in our State will be advanced. Protecting a child's right to family life and the children of unmarried families from discrimination based on their parents' marital status, providing that the best interests of the child will be the paramount consideration in decisions involving guardianship, custody and access and providing children with the right to have their voices heard as part of the best interests determination regarding guardianship, custody and access cases are important developments. Not alone that, they are necessary.

Progress on these issues is very much a follow-on to the constitutional amendment which was approved in November 2012. I was very glad to be able to conduct a substantial canvass in my constituency of Cavan-Monaghan in support of the amendment in autumn 2012. Work on the amendment commenced in 2006. The late Brian Lenihan, as a former Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and Justice and Equality, and the late Rory Brady, who was a former Attorney General, did very important work in initiating that process. In autumn 2007 the all-party Oireachtas committee was established to deal with this issue. I was glad at that time, on behalf of the Government, to put through the Oireachtas the proposal to establish that committee. People of all parties and none were on it, did exceptionally good and thorough work and dealt in a comprehensive manner with very difficult issues. I remember the contribution of the Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, at that time to the work of the committee, along with many other Oireachtas colleagues from across all parties.

The committee's work took longer than expected, but its detailed deliberations and hearings were necessary and very worthwhile. The Government, in granting the extra time for the committee to carry out its work, made the right decision. It is very important that we give adequate time to a full consideration of and detailed debate on this important Bill. I hope the Bill is not rushed in any way because we all know that rushed legislation can often turn out to have very negative unintended consequences.

See this speech in context