Seanad debates

Thursday, 26 March 2015

Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage

 

10:30 am

Photo of Rónán MullenRónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Recently, in Brussels, we were discussing complex legislation going through the European institutions, and it was like getting blood out of a stone trying to get the bureaucracy to make concrete what it was proposing and to give real-life examples that would illustrate the choice it had to make. It seems we are teetering in that direction here. The Minister made some attempt, by referencing "threat to life", to answer Senator Healy Eames' question, but I cannot but imagine that the Minister must have talked this up and down with her officials and with various other parties, and talked about the kind of scenarios that would justify an exceptional withholding of information by the Minister. Why the Minister cannot share some of those with us to elucidate the justification is one point.

Second, I am not objecting in this terribly flawed situation to the possibility of withholding such information, but the grounds should be very exceptional and grave. I would ask the Minister what mischief would it do to insert the notion of gravity. She states already that a harmonious interpretation of the other section of the Bill would point to that anyway. What harm does it do? I have already pointed out to the Minister that a court called on to determine whether grounds for withholding information were sufficient might come to a different decision than it would if called on to determine whether the grounds were sufficiently grave. If the Minister agrees that it should only be in exceptional cases that information - that will tell a person who he or she is - should be withheld, she should give us an example or two that will make sense of it. More importantly, since I agree with her anyway, the Minister should tell me what harm it would do to insert the word "grave" to provide for sufficient gravity.

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