Marcella Corcoran Kennedy (Offaly, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Noone for the opportunity to address this matter.

The Children and Family Relationships Act 2015, which is the responsibility of the Minister for Justice and Equality, came into operation in January 2016 and put in place a legal architecture to address the needs of children across a range of family structures in the areas of parentage, custody, guardianship and access. The Act provides for comprehensive reform of family law to bring it up to date with the realities of family life in Ireland.

Section 97 of the Children and Family Relationships Act inserts a New Section 27A into the Civil Registration Act 2004, which permits the taking and receiving of statutory declarations under the Guardianship of Infants Act 1964 by registrars. The aim of this new provision is to provide better information to non-marital parents and to make it easier for non-marital fathers to avail of the statutory declaration mechanism to acquire guardianship. Where the parents, one or both, register the birth of a child, the registrar will give them a copy of the statutory declaration so that they can consider whether to make a statutory declaration appointing the father as a guardian of the child, witnessed by the registrar. It is clear that the commencing of this section will impose additional duties on the registrar.

Another piece of legislation that provides for additional duties on the registrars is the Civil Registration (Amendment) Act 2014, which was enacted by the Oireachtas on 4 December 2014. The enactment of this legislation prompted industrial action by the registrars. The additional duties in this legislation involve provision to make it more difficult to broker a marriage of convenience in the State, make it more difficult to broker a marriage of convenience in the State, the compulsory registration of fathers' name on birth certificates and for a record to be registered in Ireland of deaths of Irish citizens who die abroad.

As a result of the industrial relations action, the HSE engaged with IMPACT on the issues which arose. Hearings under the auspices of the conciliation services of the Workplace Relations Commission took place in October and November 2015. Arising from these hearings, it was agreed to commence an independently facilitated review of the Civil Registration Service. The review was extensive and involved a visit to all of the Civil Registration Offices, as well as a survey which received a 90% response rate. The review also included a staffing analysis based on activity and work complexity, as well as an examination of how infrastructure requirements can be future-proofed against additional demands on the service. A draft report of the review of the Civil Registration Service was received by the HSE on 14 February 2017. While a meeting will take place with IMPACT on the contents of the report before it is finalised, I understand that it is not anticipated that the implementation of the remaining elements of the legislation will be adversely affected by industrial action.