Charles Flanagan (Laois, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Amendment No. 14 to section 15 provides that neither Part 5 nor Part 5A of the 2004 Act shall apply to a presumed death. This amendment also corrects an earlier omission of a reference to Part 5A. Part 5 concerns the registration of deaths in general and Part 5A concerns the keeping of a record of deaths abroad.

The other amendments to section 15 concern the process of the registration of a presumed death. The Bill, as passed by this House, provides that the appropriate registrar shall be provided with a copy of either the presumption of death order or the variation order by the court which made that order and that the appropriate registrar shall register the death or remove the entry from the register as may be appropriate. The appropriate registrar was defined as a registrar in the functional area of the authority in which the death was presumed to have occurred, or if a place of presumed death cannot be determined, the area in which the missing person was normally resident. These amendments were made in the interests of efficient management of the registration process, to allow An tArd-Chláraitheoir the flexibility to perform registrations centrally or to assign the task to a registrar, thus simplifying the registration process by comparison with the process as set out in the Bill as passed earlier by the Seanad. The proposed arrangements also act to provide a single point of contact for the receipt of court orders.