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

This is a good amendment because we need to re-examine this section. The Minister should take it on board. If we can get this right for the Seanad, the Minister should be open-minded about it.

There are two conflicting perspectives which need to be reconciled. First, Deputy Coppinger raises the legitimate concern as to why, in a situation where the parents do not live together and where they no longer have a relationship, the father should get automatic guardianship because there are many circumstances where that could be problematic. She is correct. There are many circumstances where it could be problematic and, therefore, it should not be automatic.

Equally, and this is my problem with the Bill, the Minister's criterion for giving automatic guardianship, where the parents live together for 12 months, including three months after the baby is born, is arbitrary and meaningless. It is a criterion for which the Minister cannot provide any rational justification. It is arbitrary and therefore discriminates against unmarried fathers who happen not to live with the mother of the child. I have a friend who is about to have twins with his partner and they will not be married. They do not live together and they will not be living together. To get guardianship, he is going to have to go through an extra hoop over and above somebody who happens to live with their partner. That makes no sense. The way to deal with this and to level the playing field is to remove subsection (3) in page 39 and the related paragraph (b). In this way, for an unmarried father to get guardianship, he would merely have to sign a declaration. That way one would not have these two different categories. One would merely have to sign a declaration. In addition, it should be made as easy as possible for that declaration to be made, unless the mother has an legitimate objection, which she might well have, and there should be a requirement on the State to inform parents about their right to make that declaration. This arbitrary criterion the Minister has created jars and makes no sense. I have explained how I think we could resolve this. The Minister should do that.

In that context, Deputy Coppinger's requirement that there would be a report on all this later on to see how it is working and whether there are unexpected consequences is a sensible amendment and I support it.

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