Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)

One is "a person" unless one is married. There is a presumption in law that one is the father if one is married to the mother, except when that presumption is taken away. I have thought long and hard about this and I have been convinced by quite a number of arguments. We have discussed this many times. I would like to see the Senator's objectives being met but how should we go about it? We are talking, first, about the right of a child to know who his father is, and second, about encouraging the two parents to register. The more I thought about this and the more questions I asked, the more complicated it became. I see where the Senator is coming from, but Senator Cox is right — introducing the word "man" would not have the intended effect because of the current presumption in law.

I considered the issue of the compulsory naming of a father and the registration of a father's particulars. Sometimes, unless we have all the facts we cannot make valuable judgments. In the birth registrations of January 2004, for example, in Erinville Hospital in Cork there was 91% registration of fathers; in Limerick Regional Maternity Hospital there was 93% registration; in Tralee General Hospital there was 95% registration; and in Sligo General Hospital there was 94%. This indicates high participation of fathers in the registration of their children.