Seanad debates
Thursday, 13 November 2003
Address by Ms Mary Banotti, MEP.
In the seven years I have worked on the issue, a great many things have changed culturally. One of the most significant is the issue of fathers' rights. Fathers' access and interest in maintaining contact with their children in the event of a relationship breaking down has become really significant, which I greatly welcome. Another issue is that more and more people are marrying or having children across national borders, and many of them are here, since many Irish people travel abroad. I call some of my cases the holiday romance cases. One goes off to somewhere lovely and sunny where the beaches are white and someone perfectly beautiful with big, brown eyes and lots of lovely hair comes up, and one falls in love. As we all know, love takes a great deal of working on, and within two or three years things are very often beginning to happen. I can see that many of the Senators realise that. As a result, the mother generally decides that she does not like the man any more. The reasons she fell in love with the man initially, such as him having a great deal of time to lie on the beach and court her, become a slightly different matter when one has two children and there is no money coming in. That is often when young mothers decide to go home to their own mothers. When they telephone me after they have arrived home, they are surprised when I say they have to return to where they came from with the child. I have to explain to them that, under international law, they have to go back. They may be able to return home again with the child, with the agreement of the father, but this may not be possible. Much more public discussion is required about this matter. Many young people who marry outside their own culture cannot understand why they cannot return to this country with their children.
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