Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Fáiltim roimh an deis cúpla focal a rá faoin leasú seo don Bhunreacht. Ceapaim go bhfuil sé tábhachtach agus aontaím leis ach tá mé buartha faoin míniú atá ann agus faoin gcumarsáid maidir le durability. Tiocfaidh mé ar ais go dtí sin. I agree with the Minister who said that the constitutional position remains that Article 41 does not apply to unmarried couples. That is a dreadful situation and I totally agree with the Minister on that.

It is something we have to change and must change.

Regarding the manner in which this is being done and the limited time involved, I agree with Deputy Bríd Smith. It smacks of seizing the opportunity on International Women's Day, which we will celebrate anyway. I would prefer to get the wording right. I fully support the Minister on the need to change Article 41 to broaden the definition of family to reflect the complexity of our society. Irish society was always complex. However, we gave no recognition to that and anyone who fitted outside the norm was locked up. The phrase of Professor Smith in regard to the mother and baby homes and Magdalen laundries keeps coming to mind, when he referred to the architecture of institution. That is what women mostly lived with. In one sense, it is not that life has become more complex. It was always complex, but we chose not to recognise that and anyone who stood outside of that was locked up in a mother and baby home, Magdalen laundry or industrial school.

Within the Constitution, we enshrined restrictive language that the family was based on marriage, but the Constitution went on to give protection to that marriage. I agree with that. Marriage should be protected. However, the definition of marriage needs to be broadened.

Unfortunately, pre-legislative scrutiny was waived, which it should not have been, to fit into a time span so that the Government could get its moment in the sun on International Women's Day. I do not agree with that. The definition needs to be teased out. We need to examine how we include as many people as possible. I do not think the wording in the Bill captures that. I have read about the mother and baby homes and the number of children born outside of marriage. I do not have the figures to hand, but I wish I had because they were always quite high. Again, we chose to ignore them.

More recent figures copper-fasten how life has changed and how many children are born within what is a protected marriage under the Constitution compared with other relationships which have varying protection under the Constitution. There were a total of 23,173 opposite and same-sex marriages, which is huge progress, in 2022, compared with only 17,217 in 2021. The figures on how many children are born outside of the protected constitutional provision are significant. The number of families with no children saw an increase of 11% since 2016. There was an increase of 14% compared with 2011. That gives us a taste of the complexity of different families with and without children and children born outside marriage. The number of same-sex couples increased by 157% compared with 2011. In 2022, the figure stood at 10,393. Since 2016, the number of cohabiting couples without children living in private households went up by 17%, more than twice the growth rate of married couples. We are not giving enough protection to cohabiting couples. There are discriminatory systems ranging from social welfare to inheritance.

Children within marriage is still the most common type of family unit. The number of married couples with children rose by only 2%, but the number of cohabiting couples with children increased by nearly 13% in the same period. All of this is set out in the digest given to us by the library and research service, which I thank. It works under awful pressure and produces digests to give us a background to what is going on. I recommend it to every TD because it provides good background information.

There were 57,540 births registered last year, 57% within marriage or civil partnerships and 24,754 outside of marriage. That shows a trend regarding the increasing complexity of Irish life. I am uncomfortable saying that because, as I have said, there was always complexity. The recognition in a positive way of the complexity in Irish life is what is progress.

I welcome the amendment but not the limited time within which to discuss it. We are describing a relationship outside of marriage, which requires a lot more debate in respect of the word "durable". I do not mean to be facetious or argumentative, but I have the greatest difficulty with the word "durable". If I take it on a personal basis in my own experience, I might apply the term "durable" to one particular relationship and not another that was much longer than a shorter relationship. I do not know about that word. It needs to be teased out. It should have been teased out at the pre-legislative scrutiny stage, but it was not and this will now be dealt with on Committee Stage. That is not really the place to do it.

I sat as Leas-Cheann Comhairle last night and watched amendment after amendment come before the House. I am not crossing boundaries into my other role; I am simply talking as a TD in regard to the number of amendments that come forward on Committee and Report Stage which make it absolutely impossible for democracy to work or for TDs to do their job. This Bill is a perfect example. It is a very short Bill involving a very brief change to the Constitution, but we have the term "durable".

I could quote many cases, but there is a recent Supreme Court judgment regarding a case I will not go into. Ms Justice Baker, speaking on the term "durable", said it does not mean permanent and a test that requires permanence in that sense would be an impossible burdensome hurdle and would not be in accordance with any modern understanding of intimate relationships.

See this speech in context