Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for taking this matter on behalf of the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Leo Varadkar, who is unavoidably unavailable. This issue was brought to my attention by councillor Ted Leddy in Dublin west, who has been working on it for some time and has asked me to look into it further with the Minister, although I have a feeling we will not get it resolved today.

I welcome Mrs. Bernadette Goodwin to the Gallery. She tragically lost her five year old son, Keith Charles Goodwin, in a drowning accident in the north of Spain on 25 July 1972. She has received what is supposed to be a death certificate for Keith from the Spanish authorities but she is not entirely happy with what she has received. Keith was brought home to be buried in Malahide cemetery. Mrs. Goodwin has spent decades trying to get Keith's death registered in the Dublin register and to get a certificate of his death as an Irish citizen. For insurance, legal and perhaps industrial reasons a death cannot be registered twice in the EU, or in two countries. I have not really got to the bottom of the issue and I was hoping that the Minister would be able to enlighten me.

There are additional details and nuances to Mrs. Goodwin's case which I would like to explore at a different date but, in the interim, we owe it to people like Mrs. Goodwin to expedite the provision in the Civil Registration (Amendment) Act 2014 which provides for a record of deaths abroad to be maintained by the General Register Office. As it stands, this section of the legislation has not commenced and I understand there may be administrative or staffing reasons for this situation. It is three years since the legislation was brought in and this situation is unsatisfactory. I accept that the record will not be a legal document but it will provide some comfort to Irish families such as Mrs. Goodwin's, who have tragically lost a loved one abroad. I call for this provision to be expedited.