Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I also raised this issue on Second Stage. Obviously, my comments come in the context of general support for this Bill, which is a very welcome Bill that acknowledges the reality of diverse family relations in our society today. However, the issue of unmarried fathers having to pass a criterion of having lived with the mother for 12 consecutive months, including for three months after the birth of the child, is very arbitrary and does not make any particular sense. While I apologise for not having been here earlier, I would be most interested to hear the Minister's justification for this.

Obviously, there are circumstances involving a father from whom the mother of the child is separated, or with whom she never had any long-term relationship, where the mother may believe there are reasons he should not have automatic guardianship, and I certainly think we have to allow for that in some way. However, on the other hand, in the vast majority of cases fathers and mothers, married or unmarried - the parents - want to play a full part in bringing up their kids. I do not believe we should start from a presumption that any category of parent has to have extra hoops to jump through in order to benefit from automatic guardianship.

If the Minister needs to put in safeguards which allow a mother to debar a father whom she thinks might be, for example, a threat to a child or to herself from having guardianship, then such provisions obviously need to exist and may be spelt out explicitly. Obviously, people can go to the courts, and the best interests of the child are firmly established in the Bill. However, I do not see why the Minister has this particular category and these fairly arbitrary criteria when, probably in the majority of cases, there is no difficulty with an unmarried father who does not happen to fit these criteria having automatic guardianship. I say that as an unmarried father myself. I think I would probably just about fit these criteria, so I think I would pass. However, a person could be on the borderline. It is very arbitrary. I would like to hear the Minister's response and I hope she will be open-minded in how she deals with this when it moves to the Seanad in order to take on board these concerns.

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