Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 5, between lines 17 and 18, to insert the following: “(3) Before this Act comes into operation the Minister shall publish a report which outlines the following:

(a) the degree of financial dependence that families with divorced or separated parents have on those parents;

(b) an overview of the legal issues with not providing the same level of access to social protection payments for some children’s families based on the marital status of their separated or divorced parents.”.

I am speaking on amendment No. 1. This is a very important amendment, in particular given that our key amendments have been ruled out of order. That is bizarre because we should have a right to debate the changes being made to the Bill by the Government. We should have the right to vote on them, but the Government is using the so-called additional costs reason which, in this case, is inappropriate because the Minister, it could well be argued, is removing a cost. We have no control over this.

The lack of attention this Bill has received is very unfortunate. It is very unfortunate that despite all of the political correspondents hanging around the Dáil, none saw fit to write an article on the Bill. The changes the Minister proposes to make on the back of the O'Meara judgment are completely against what the Supreme Court ruled. The Supreme Court wanted to equalise the situation, whereby cohabiting people would have the same entitlements as married, separated and divorced people if their partner died. Instead, the Minister will apply the legislation to cohabiting people while excluding separated and divorced people.

My amendment calls for an assessment to be carried out in advance of the financial hardship that will occur for so many families arising from this change. The Free Legal Advice Centres, FLAC, One Parent and Treoir, key organisations that deal with lone parents, women and all sorts of one-parent families, have all opposed these changes. The Minister is setting his face against them.

I will provide a couple of examples. This is an attack on a universal payment. On Committee Stage, I asked what alternative the Minister was providing for separated or divorced partners who had maintenance arrangements in place with a deceased partner and may have been co-parenting and sharing parental costs with their partner, such as getting help to pay their mortgage or rent or to fund their children's education, if they had children. What the Minister said in respect of one parent families was completely disingenuous because he knew the change would not apply to most people. Payments are means tested. If people work, etc., they do not receive the payments. Families will be plunged into poverty as a result of this. People who have maintenance agreements and support will lose all of that, along with emotional support. The Minister is fine with that. It is quite shocking.

This is a breach of faith. The statements made by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the two main parties in respect of the divorce referendum, included a promise that people would not suffer if they were divorced or separated. However, the Minister is now introducing discrimination against people who are separated or divorced.

The worst aspect of the Bill relates to children. The Minister is creating a new discrimination against children. I hope the Ombudsman for Children takes this up. I know for a fact there will be legal cases taken in the future on this.

I want to highlight another issue, namely, funeral costs. When my partner died last September, I, along with my daughter, organised the funeral. I shared parental responsibilities with my late partner. I paid for the funeral because he did not have any other family. If this were to happen next year, I would pay for somebody's funeral, lose maintenance and be in a really difficult situation, regardless of being a TD. This happened before I was elected. I am talking about people in ordinary jobs who are trying to keep their families going. The Minister is okay with this. There is a grant of up to €8,000 for funeral costs, which will be gone for many people. Treoir and other organisations, such as FLAC, which took the case that brought about the change, have asked the Minister not to do this. Its representatives have met the Minister and spoken at briefings. Unfortunately, the Minister has not changed his mind.

The Minister is trying to make out the O'Meara judgment said we had to do this. The O'Meara judgment did not say he had to do this. It made it very clear that all children and partners should be treated equally. We have a bizarre situation now. I know somebody who will benefit from this and I am delighted. I have been briefing them about this Bill for months because they are a single cohabiting person with no children. Somebody who is cohabiting and does not have any children will get this, but somebody who has three, four or five children with their partner and was in receipt of financial support will get nothing. How does the Minister justify this? It is seriously beyond belief the way he is doing this so blithely. It is wrong that the Minister is pushing ahead with this despite all of the cases being made.

The Minister hates putting ideas into people's minds but he has now opened the way for private pension companies to discriminate against separated people. I know this for a fact because, from experience and from having spoken to solicitors, separated people are treated exactly the same way as married people in terms of getting death in service benefits and other pensions their partner may have had. The Minister is now opening it up to profit-hungry insurance and life assurance companies to change that situation. They will decide that they can do so because the Government has done so. It is absolutely disgraceful.

I ask that the proposed change not be brought in until the Minister has reported on the financial implications of doing so. The legal implications are huge. I have cited pension companies and cases that definitely will be taken to the High Court, Supreme Court or whatever on behalf of separated and divorced people. They should not have to do that because we are telling the Minister now that there is a problem and he is just not listening. He is trying to make this cost neutral and does not seem to recognise the impact it will have, primarily on women, by the way, because it is women who are lower paid in general and have living arrangements involving children. It is a real attack on women as well, and that has been said by all of the organisations.

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