Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Our legislation supports the children of married families by promoting, in the context of marriage breakdown, their right to have a meaningful relationship with both parents.

I wish to highlight some of the points about the rights of families and couples. As determined by the European Court of Human Rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, non-marital couples have a right to a family life. The decision reached in the case of Schalk and Kopf v. Austria on 24 June 2010 demonstrates - this was reaffirmed in PB and JS v. Austria on 22 July 2010 and in another case - that couples in non-marital relationships, both with and without children, are entitled to protection of their right to a family life under Article 8 of the convention. Any legislation that has been or is to be enacted must be interpreted in the light of the convention. It should also be noted that under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, a child has a right to have his or her family relationships recognised. The absence of an appropriate mechanism for affiliation was found to breach a child's rights under Article 8 in the case of Marckx v. Belgium in June 1979. The principle I have outlined in this regard is applicable to children in cases of assisted reproduction. Last year the refusal of the French state to recognise the relationship between a parent and a child in two instances of AHR was considered to violate the children's right to a family life under Article 8. In particular, the European Court of Human Rights noted that the children were in a state of legal uncertainty and that it was unclear whether they would be able to obtain recognition of their French nationality. This was held to undermine the children's right to an identity within French society and to contravene the margin of appreciation enjoyed by the state in cases of AHR.