Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Bill, which is important and enlightened legislation. In the future it will certainly help ordinary citizens who will no longer have to seek out, for certain bureaucratic purposes, birth certificates that have been hidden in drawers or other places. It is a big advance that child benefit will follow automatically on the registration of births.

Senator Brian Hayes asked whether child benefit should be payable to the mother. That measure was adopted about 20 years ago as a piece of positive discrimination. It was a social reform because child benefit was not always going where it was most needed. I am not sure whether social conditions have changed sufficiently for that to be no longer necessary, but I would hesitate to change the system too hurriedly.

The importance of registration for tracing family roots has not been referred to a great deal during the debate, but much of the work of the General Register Office is concerned with genealogy. Genealogists have suggested that a death certificate should include the names of the deceased's parents. If someone called John Ryan dies in a place where there are perhaps a dozen other John Ryans, such details would help to identify the particular person concerned. Such a provision should be examined from a genealogical angle.

In her speech, the Minister referred to the formal introduction of registration but informal methods of registration date back to the mid-17th century. I have had occasion to look through the registers in the Bolton Library in Cashel, some of which date back to the 1650s. In 1779, Archbishop Agar, of whom a lengthy biography was launched by the Taoiseach last year, introduced a system for registering births, marriages and deaths in the Church of Ireland community. Complete registers for the various parishes exist from that period, following which the registration system was gradually adopted elsewhere. Such records are very helpful in carrying out genealogical research.

I compliment the Minister and her Department on sorting out a potential problem concerning the explicit requirement for people to state there are no impediments to a marriage taking place. In the Church of Ireland that position was indicated by silence, whereas the legislation seeks a formal affirmation. There was particular concern because a prayer book is currently being printed and, naturally enough, people did not want to have to change it at great expense and bin the old copies. I compliment the Minister and her Department on having solved that problem. Looking through the legislation, I see that certain practical dispositions have had to be taken regarding other denominations in order to satisfy the law.

Although many of us attend weddings, it is relatively rare that we act as principal witnesses on such occasions. My daughter got married last year and my clear impression was that when a married couple go off on honeymoon, the officiating clergyman takes charge of returning the registration form, although I accept that marriages are not always solemnised by a clergyman. I note that the legislation places a responsibility for returning the registration form on the couple themselves but, de facto, it seems that the clergyman often undertakes this task.

There is another problem, which is less pleasing to consider. People who live alone are often found dead some time after their demise but the legislation does not appear to refer to determining the date of death. There is a practice whereby the date of death that is entered on a register is quite often the date on which the deceased person was found. They may have passed away two or three days beforehand, however, and the legislation is not clear on how one is supposed to determine the date of death in such cases.

I note an enlightened piece of modern legislation is contained in the First Schedule which states

The surname of the child to be entered shall, subject to any linguistic modifications [I like that. It is very important in Irish circumstances] be—

(a) that of the parents of the child as stated in the register of births or of either of them, as may be determined by the person who, pursuant to section 19, gives the required particulars of the birth concerned to the registrar . . .

In other words, it means that, even where people are married, the child can take the name of its mother or father and, therefore, all the patronymic stuff does not necessarily have to follow any more.

All children have a father, of course, and it is progress, as Senator White said, that it is now possible to have the father's name added to the certification. In principle, it is desirable that both parents' names be recorded and recognised as the parents. I accept this cannot be done coercively and that consent is required. It raised the thought in my mind that when a mother indicates a person as being the father of her child, and if she is not in contact with him, someone else should contact him to see whether he is willing to be so recognised. There is a principle that people should be encouraged to accept responsibility for bringing a child into the world. Clearly, it is not just the mother who brings the child into the world, so fathers have a responsibility in this regard.

During the debate, a point was made about legal guardianship, which is an important issue but I am not sure that it is suitable for the Civil Registration Bill. It is probably something for inclusion in separate legislation, while being cross-referenced to this Bill.

I was an adviser to the former Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, when he decided to decentralise the General Register Office to Roscommon. To say that it was greeted with universal enthusiasm might be a slight exaggeration, even in comparison to the criteria we were applying to the debate earlier this evening. Even though wheels sometimes move slowly, they do eventually turn and I am glad that it is eventually, if tardily, coming to fruition.