Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am happy to come in. This is an issue I feel strongly about. We have raised and discussed it at the Joint Committee on Gender Equality, which the Minister has mentioned. It would be regrettable if the committee, which is in place to expedite and press for action and monitor what actions are happening in respect of the many recommendations of the citizens' assembly, was in some way used as a reason not to do things that move us forward in terms of equality in the State, or to wait. They made a number of recommendation. On some of them progress has been made. On others, there should be progress now and the committee should not be regarded as any kind of pause button. It is important that we be clear on that. We already have the interim report of the committee in respect of the substantive question, the point which was made by the citizens very clearly. They called for Article 41 of the Constitution to be amended so it would protect private and family life with the protection afforded to the family not limited to the marital family. We know that is the view of the citizens. The committee has also endorsed that view. We do not need to wait for a constitutional referendum to start getting the legislation in place. The fact that there has been a call for a referendum next year is a reason to start getting the legislation in place. At the moment we have a piecemeal effect. We have legislation that is outdated and based very much on a hierarchy of what units in society are recognised, be they married or not.Then we have some legislation that has tried to promote equality, such as the Children and Family Relationships Act and the Equal Status Acts. There is nothing to stop the promotion of equality through legislation. Indeed, legislation has done a lot of the heavy lifting to repair what is an inequality of recognition at constitutional level. This has enabled us to have a referendum that simply deals, in a clean way, with the recognition of all families, including lone-parent families, which make up almost one quarter of families in this State, as well as the 150,000 persons in cohabiting couples about whom we have heard. That is the referendum, but we do not need to wait for that to fix the legislation. It is much better if we fix that which we can fix early on, as we did with the marriage equality referendum and in other cases.

Let us look to the ruling of the judge again. The crucial and fundamental point was that this is a loving family in the sense in which a family is generally understood in our society. There are many more loving families like this across the State. The problem, according to the judge, is that the legislation as it is currently drafted - the dated legislation that this Bill is rightly trying to update - seeks to support and promote the marriage contract and not families. Why not have legislation that supports and promotes families? There are many areas that we need to address. When we have one we can start addressing, we need to start doing that.

Let us be clear on social protection. We need to look to the primary goal of the legislation from the Department of Social Protection. Is the primary goal of our widower's pension system and our social protection payments for families that have suffered a horrible loss the protection of those families or is it the promotion of the institution of marriage? It is within our power to ensure that at least the social protection legislation, whatever about inheritance legislation and all those other areas that have been flagged and that we will need to address in time, prioritises social protection and the protection of all those parts and units of society which are families, whatever their form may take. It is within our power to do that.

Even if there is a concern for the marital family and cohabiting when there may be multiple families, those are issues that could be addressed in amendments. There is nothing to stop those issues being addressed by amendments on Committee Stage and through a constructive debate at that time. Bills move slowly in these Houses and it would be at least a few months before we would see this coming back. Let us have a Bill that is moving. If the Minister really feels that she cannot support this moving forward or that she needs to delay it today, the onus comes on the Department to address it through the social welfare Bill. We hear a lot about inadvertent consequences but sometimes when we talk about avoiding unintended consequences, we need to look to what our intentions are when we know there is harm not as an unintended consequence but as a known consequence of how the legislation is drafted. A known consequence is that real families - the kinds of families all of us across the House have spoken about - are experiencing grief and not getting the social protection and support they need. When we know that, we cannot fail to act. In that context, it is crucial that there would be a sign of action. It should be taken in this Bill but it also needs to be reflected in the social welfare legislation. It should spark a wider review of the social welfare legislation, which we need to see.

We are meeting officials from the Department of Social Protection in the Joint Committee on Gender Equality tomorrow morning. I am sure other members of the committee would agree that the Minister would be welcome to join the committee and engage with us on those issues in a constructive way tomorrow morning. That would be a good opportunity for us to tease these issues out further, not only with the officials but also with the Minister.