Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This is a very important Bill. The Labour Party is unambiguously and unequivocally in support of early implementation of this legislation. We are all aware of the objectives of the Civil Registration Bill 2019 which is bringing forward several amendments which are extremely technical. I concur with Deputy O'Dea that it is extremely difficult for an ordinary individual who has no lawyerly inclination to interpret or comprehend the legislation. I spent a few hours trying to read it today and was baffled by some of it. It amends the Civil Registration Act 2004. I recall spending a considerable length of time in the bunker debating it and will never forget it because it was an intrinsically complex Bill and we were hardly out of the bunker when it had to be amended again. It is no surprise, in the context of further advances in law and science, that it requires further amendment in line with our evolution as a society, the diversity of family formations, types of relationship and everything else.

In brief, the Bill makes several amendments to the civil registration process in the registration of donor assisted births and in respect of the presumption of paternity in the registration of births. It expands the role of next of kin in registering a death in cases where the coroner is involved.

I concur with Deputy O'Dea. The Bill does not seem to be as expansive as it sounds. It permits the sharing of the General Register Office's historical data and records with the National Library of Ireland and the National Archives of Ireland under the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and facilitates collection of additional details of deceased persons in order that the CSO can comply with EU obligations pertaining to EUROSTAT which furnishes statistics and so on.

While the Bill is relatively short, it is significant in its impact and import and of huge importance to the families affected. Like everybody else, my Labour Party colleagues and I have been contacted by a significant number of people. We were in the vanguard in promoting this legislation during the years. The Bill corrects an error. Two Acts passed in 2015, the Gender Recognition Act and the Children and Family Relationships Act, both made amendments to the Civil Registration Act 2004 by inserting additional definitions into section 2 of that Act. The Children and Family Relationships Act inserted the following definitions:

‘Act of 2015’ means the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015;

‘donor-conceived child’ has the same meaning as it has in Part 2 of the Act of 2015;

‘parent’, in relation to a donor-conceived child, means the parent or parents of that child under section 5 of the Act of 2015.

The Gender Recognition Act inserted the following:

‘Act of 2015’ means the Gender Recognition Act 2015;

‘gender recognition certificate’ has the meaning assigned to it by the Act of 2015.

The amendments were at cross purposes. That was part of the reason for the delay, as was the ambivalence in trying to bring legislation through. We ended up with two Acts of 2015 being referred to and because of the impossibility of interpreting the legislation properly, the relevant parts of the Children and Family Relationships Act could not be commenced. The change provided for in this Bill facilitates the commencement of legislation that will provide for the registration of births of donor conceived children, but it has been awaited a long time. A massive error was made. The Bill amends the reference in section 2 of the Civil Registration Act 2004 to the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 as the "Act of 2015" and instead refers to that Act by its full name, which gets rid of the problem.

The technical amendment facilitates commencement of existing legislation to allow both partners in either a male-female or same-sex female relationship who have been through a donor assisted birth process to have their details shown on birth certificates. The result will be that the gestational mother will be listed as "mother" on a child's birth certificate, while a second female parent will be registered as a parent. It should be noted that while the 2015 Act provides for either a man or a woman to be the second parent of a donor conceived child, there must be a birth mother. The Act, therefore, does not apply where two men seek to be registered as the parents of a child, of which one is the birth father. Same-sex male relationships are still excluded since, under the 2015 Act, in every case of donor assisted reproduction the birth mother is always the parent of the child. A male couple may well have to go down the adoption route to deal with this issue.

The evidential value of birth certificates is a hobby horse of mine. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will not mind me going off on the issue. It may be worth noting that all of the amendments to the law are based on the notion of the birth certificate actually proving the relationships to which it relates. As a matter of strict law, they are, in fact, of no evidential value in proving age, identity or parentage. Most of us rely instead on the presumption that the husband who was living with his wife for the ten months before she gave birth is the father of the child or, if necessary, on DNA tests in order to establish paternity. In criminal law, however, the rules of evidence have been changed to make a birth certificate admissible in evidence. Section 5(5) of the Criminal Evidence Act 1992 provides:

where a document purports to be a birth certificate issued [pursuant to law] and (b) a person is named therein as father or mother of the person to whose birth the certificate relates,the document shall be admissible in any criminal proceedings as evidence of the relationship indicated therein.

We should take the opportunity to reform civil law along the same lines and make sure birth certificates are admissible in civil proceedings.

The Bill seeks to amend existing legislation to allow a mother to more easily rebut the presumption of paternity of her estranged husband in registering a birth by filing a statutory declaration. This is certainly a welcome amendment, particularly in cases in which there have been difficult relationships, total estrangement, or even violence. It makes it less onerous for the mother to rebut the presumption in respect of the child being registered, which will now be automatic in nature.

The Bill seeks to provide a role for the next of kin in registering a death in cases involving a coroner. According to the explanatory memorandum which was the only way in which I could figure it out, the relevant section "provides for the inclusion of a family member as a qualified informant in the registration of a death where a coroner is involved. This will allow the family of the deceased to have a greater role in the registration process which, in some cases, may result in registration of a more complete set of particulars". That is useful.

All in all, the Labour Party unequivocally welcomes this legislation and supports its quick passage. The people affected wanted it to be passed yesterday. There should be no more unnecessary delays. Like my colleagues, I received a call yesterday from two people about the Bill. Its text is fine from the perspective of most people in recognising same-sex parents in official documentation, but everybody has concerns about timing. How quickly can the legislation be enacted and implemented? This is an issue that has affected same-sex parents for a number of years. The Minister can understand that the people affected are anxious to see the amendments being implemented. A number of organisations that have been in contact with me and my Labour Party colleagues have asked whether the Minister could give an indicative date for when the legislation will complete all Stages in the Oireachtas and be enacted. Will there be a gap between enactment and commencement? That is critical because it is the lack of commencement that will kill the whole thing. We might work very well and the Minister is working well to get the legislation through and I am sure she will be facilitated in the Seanad, but we need an indicative date for when the legislation will actually take effect.

I know that some of the provisions depend on the commencement of specific parts of the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015, including perhaps Parts 2, 3, and 9 which have been referred to extensively by my colleagues. Since responsibility for the commencement of these Parts lies with the Minister's colleague, the Minister for Health, I hope there will be no procrastination or undue delay on his part or under his stewardship or supervision. It is important that the Minister give us unambiguous and unqualified replies on the question of when the Bill will be commenced.

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