Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I commend the work the Minister has done in the Department of Justice and the work done by the Minister, Deputy McEntee. It seems no time since this was announced, in Government terms at least, and now here we are.We are commencing with the Bill and I really welcome that.

There is no doubt that the family court and family proceedings have their own unique flavour and unique province. One is dealing with relationships that are, in most cases, going to have to endure for the entirety of the individual's and the child's life. These are people who must continue to engage. One day, for example, the parents will be at their grandchildren's christening together, so it would be good to have proceedings as harmonious as possible. I am very fortunate to be in a very functioning, loving and blended family, but that is rare enough. It is unfortunate when there is a lack of maturity or a huge amount of wounding, but at the heart of it there is an adversarial system that is not suited to the nature of family proceedings. There is slow access to the court and it takes a long time to resolve. In that time of waiting it exacerbates people's hurt and their sense of frustration of not being able to move on.

In this, I am aware of a couple of things. Obviously, this can move very quickly and is not dependent on the building of a new family court building in Hammond Lane, as is promised, but do we have any idea of the timeline on that? That would be useful even from a practitioner point of view: people are either at Smithfield or in Dolphin House. I have had the experience of Dolphin House when I went for guardianship of our daughter, taking along my husband who was fortunately consenting to guardianship. The facilities there need to be upgraded. They need different facilities. When there is such an intensity of feeling in such a tiny space it make things incredibly hard. It is very important. I ask for a timeline for that.

I am aware that Women's Aid has a number of concerns, which will come to the fore when the Bill is on Committee Stage. I would ask that we make sure we are engaging with them.

Part of this Bill led to a promise on the rates of pay for solicitors with the Legal Aid Board. I will touch on this matter very briefly. Uniquely, the solicitors who go in to work with the Legal Aid Board do not have the same opportunity to come in at points and the grade as if they had joined the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions or the Chief State Solicitor's office. They come in at a starting salary based on how long they have been working there. The unfortunate point of this is that it is very low wage to start. There is, therefore, a rapid turnover of very good and committed people in there, and it will not attract the very high-calibre and experienced people because they would have to take a wage cut to work at the Legal Aid Board. As a consequence, families and those in need of solicitors in the Legal Aid Board do not get the benefit of very experienced people, and the turnover of people is just too much. I had raised this early on with the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and the view was that within the context of this Bill coming into being, it would be looked at. It is important this happens because of the experience lost.

With family law it is so urgent that we move to a different method. I practised in this area for a very short period of time and realised very quickly that my aptitude was not in that direction when at one point I found myself shouting at my client outside the High Court for the manner in which he was leaving his children without funding and without support, and for how intolerable I thought that was. I thought to myself that I could not adequately go in and do this. I would be breaking every vow I had ever made when it came to the law. It is, therefore, not an area I practise in.

Integral to this, if we are very much making sure that the best interests of the child are at heart, is that it is really important to support this with training and support for practitioners in the area. The tendency to write with a very adversarial emphasis is still there and it is important that not only do we have training but also on the other end of it to have a complaints mechanism. I believe there is a necessity to engage with the Bar Council and the Law Society in that regard to ensure they are practising in a different way once the Bill comes into being.

I will use my last two minutes of speaking time to raise a matter that is particular to my own heart, which is in the area of surrogacy. I am aware that the officials with the Minister today have worked extraordinarily hard in this area. I have asked in this House for an idea on the timeline for when the legislative amendments will come in, so they can commence on Committee Stage. I have been ruled out of order as we are not allowed to ask that. I will just have to find a different way asking.

Right now, today, there are women up and down this country who do not have access to their children because their children have been weaponised in the breakdown of that family. Today, there are applications to court for the court to take the child or children into care, or that the court intervenes where unreasonable activity is going on where the weaponising of the child is just horrific. This is while women do not have a right to a parental order to their own child. This applies also to same-sex couples.

I happen to be dealing with a number of women at the moment who are allowed to see their children for one hour per week, supervised, so this will coerce them into settling on the family home, or settling on other moneys that are owed, or something like that. It is really quite horrific. I read the solicitors' letters and it is outrageous. I have no means of making a complaint, because it is an adversarial system, but if I could I would. The day will come when I will read for these people.

I have people ringing me several times a day about how unjust it is. We need to get to a place where the security of that family and the interests of those children, who are much wanted and much desired, are at the heart of the system. There are women who are cancer survivors who are now in a place where they are controlled with regard to access to their children. It is coercive control and it is all of those things as well. We also have people with terminal prognoses who do not have a pathway to ensuring they have the oversight of their children.

Given that we are talking about family law, I would urge the Minister for Justice to use his good office to accelerate the delivery of the assisted human reproduction legislation, and to make sure there is no delay when it comes to the establishment of a regulatory authority. Given there are parental orders in respect of fathers, there is no reason we must wait until the establishment of a whole authority, no reason we cannot make direct applications to the courts and that court registrars do not undertake to notify the surrogacy register and donor register in those instances. There is no reason this could not be put in place. It is really important that this happens.