Mary White (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Browne. I am pleased to welcome the Civil Registration Bill 2003 to the Seanad. The Bill provides a new legislative framework for civil registration, supports and enables the modernisation of the civil registration service and facilitates the decentralisation of the General Register Office to Roscommon. This topic is not as emotive and is not getting Senators as excited as the debate on decentralisation did earlier. However, we are here to legislate and, although it may not be exciting legislation, it is fundamentally important to the country and the modernisation of the process of civil registration.

The work being carried out jointly between the Departments of Health and Children and Social and Family Affairs is a tremendous compliment to both Departments. The public servants are driving forward this technology to give greater customer satisfaction in this regard. This major undertaking will see the introduction of modern technology to civil registration and the reform of legislation. It is interesting for the young people in the Visitors Gallery that, until now, the registration and certification production processes were manual, time-consuming and location dependent.

The re-design of the child benefit system is the first manifestation of the modernisation of the new service delivery framework. Since September 2003, all new birth registration data is transferred electronically to the Department of Social and Family Affairs from the civil registration computer system. This facilitates the allocation of a personal public service number to a child at registration. It establishes a child's public service identity and the creation of family links on the national central database for all citizens and the initiation of a child benefit claim for first born children and automatic payment for second and subsequent children in a family. In other words, a single interaction with the public service agency, for example, the registration of a birth, not only serves its original purpose, but also triggers a series of related services by another agency — in this case, the Department of Social and Family Affairs.

Part 3 provides for the registration of births and stillbirths. The principal responsibility for registering a birth will remain with the parents, who will be required to register the event within three months of the birth. To facilitate parents in fulfilling this obligation, the current time limit of a meagre 42 days will be extended to three months. In future, births may be registered with any registrar, as opposed to the current system in which the birth can only be registered by the registrar of the district in which the birth occurred. It is not location bound.

One third of births in Ireland are non-marital. When a baby is born to an unmarried mother and the father's name is not registered, up to now, that position was carved in stone and no change could be made to it. However, if there is a change in the circumstances of the relationship the father's name can be added to the certificate. This is fundamentally important and gives a much more equal opportunity to the child of the single parent than the married parent.

The registration system triggers systems in the Department of Social and Family Affairs, thus activating the child benefit system. I compliment the two Departments on the modernisation and computerisation of the birth registration system.