Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The British Journal of Education, Society & Behavioural Sciencecovered an interview survey by the National Health Service carried out between 1997 and 2013 and it makes various points about children raised in same-sex couples. I will not go into the detail of it other than to make this point which is worth noting. The study's author, and it names the author, assessed "the variety of different hypotheses about the differences, including comparative residential stability, experience of stigma or bullying, parental emotional problems ... and biological attachment. Each of these factors predictably aggravated children's emotional health but only the last of these - biological parentage - accounted for nearly all of the variation in emotional problems". By removing the biological and natural ties between the child and their mother and their father is highly dangerous. It will have serious adverse outcomes for many children, although not for all.

Why is the Minister doing this? Why are children's interests being relegated as subsidiary to that of adults? The Minister of all people, and not only in her role as Minister for Justice and Equality, should know the importance of this. I commended the fact that this was the first Government that installed a Minister for children and gave that ministry Cabinet status. Deputy Fitzgerald was that Minister and she, above all of us here, should know what is it in the best interests of children, yet she is now happy to abandon it for some ideology which does not stand up to scrutiny.