Mary Henry (Independent)

Under an Act of 1166 vagabonds, strangers, were not to stay more than one night in a house unless they became sick or their horse died. That was reasonable but not having seen the legislation I do not know why they had to be kicked out so rapidly.

Many Acts dealt with marriage, not just between the King and Queen Jane or such matters but more general matters. It is interesting how important that was because it was connected with possessions. Widows were not to be forced to marry. That is a serious problem in some parts of the developing where men die of AIDS and their widows are forced to marry another member of the family, to keep property within the family. Heaven knows why it was so useful at that time to have such legislation.

There are Acts to deal with the recognition of foreign marriages, in 1867 Odessa marriages, 1884, Greek marriages. In 1851 an Act was passed for the removal of lunatics from India. I hope it was only to remove Irish lunatics from India and that we were not expected to take everyone in. It must have been a most exciting project and I congratulate the officials involved on their work.

I am glad to hear that more will be done because when Senator Quinn and I discussed this before the debate he was anxious about some Acts such as that of 1473, on the treatment of foreign merchants which puts them under the protection of the king, whoever he might be. There is a great deal of legislation that requires further investigation and I am delighted to see that these last two Bills have begun this work so well.

I am perturbed however that we seem to be incapable of updating the phraseology we use in some of our legislation. The Leader will recall that I was very angry when the Prisons Bill was introduced before Christmas and the term "persons of unsound mind" was again used. Under that Bill, a person may lose his or her livelihood, even though there is no medical definition of "persons of unsound mind". I thought this extremely unfair and the Tánaiste's excuse regarding its inclusion related to the fact that it is contained in 157 other items of legislation. That is no reason for continuing to use the term in question. If we correct these definitions, they can be changed in all the items of legislation in which they appear. This would be preferable to having terms such as "imbecile", "moron", etc., appear in statutes. We should not use such terminology or allow it to remain in place, particularly when we are in a position to take action in respect of it.

I was particularly interested in the most recent report of the Law Reform Commission, LRC, on vulnerable adults and the law, which referred in particular to the Lunacy Regulation (Ireland) Act 1871. The latter is completely out of date but remains on the Statute Book. The LRC suggests that we should investigate the position and was helpful to include replacement legislation — this could be modified by the Houses — in an appendix to its report. The Act to which I refer cannot just be repealed, it must be replaced.