Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Bill. I understand the inconsistencies and oversights which this legislation seeks to correct. I also understand the other issues that it seeks to address. I will speak about the technical changes and the impact they will have for same-sex couples.

While I welcome the legislation, it is important that we be cognisant of the difficulties the State has caused for same-sex couples because of the slow pace at which the legislation has been progressed. Given that the Bill will address typographical errors made in the Civil Registration Act 2004, as amended by the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015, I seek the Minister’s guidance on when it is envisaged that Part 9 of the Children and Family Relationships Act will be commenced. Same-sex couples have been waiting for years for all Parts of the Children and Family Relationships Act to be commenced in order that they can register as the legal parents of their children. Currently, only the birth mother can register after she signs an affidavit stating she is the sole parent. The non-birth mother has no legal relationship to her child.

This is a ridiculous state of affairs when a child has two mothers, two parents, but only one can register as his or her parent. It is not fair on those kids or parents. Its outworking means that beyond the non-birth mother not being able to register as the child's mother, she can face difficulties in giving consent for emergency medical treatment for her child, having custody rights to her child, should the relationship breakdown, applying for a passport for her child under her citizenship and having succession rights to her child if the birth mother dies without a will. This is really unfair.

I have met parents affected by the outworking of these anomalies and the implications of the failure to commence Parts 2, 3, and 9 of the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 for them and, more importantly, their families. Had this matter been prioritised by previous Ministers for Employment Affairs and Social Protection we would not be here today; it could and should have been sorted before now. The State has a long history of leaving members of the LGBTI community behind. We have tried to move past it, but the failure to fully commence legislation to help same-sex couples leaves them behind again. I know that is not the premeditated intention, but it is the outworking of a failure to prioritise the legislation. The Government originally stated Parts 2, 3 and 9 would be commenced 12 months after enactment, but that did not happen. Following this, the Minister for Health gave deadlines to commence Parts 2 and 3. Not only did that not happen but the deadline was missed five times. In July 2018 the Minister for Health brought the Children and Family Relationships (Amendment) Bill 2018 to the Oireachtas to clear up typographical errors in Parts 2 and 3. He stated his intention was to commence them in October 2018. That did not happen and no further deadline has been set. Why has the Government taken four years to commence these key parts of the legislation? If it is not negligence, what is it? Furthermore, why did the Department only realise in the past eight months that it needed to fix typographical errors? Why was it not realised in the intervening 38 months? While I welcome the legislation, same-sex couples need full information and committed timelines in order that they can be certain that their rights will be delivered on and when they will cease from being forced to live in a worrying grey area owing to Government inaction. I hope the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection will be able to give some of these commitments.

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