Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I warmly welcome the proposed changes to the definition of "family" in Bunreacht na hÉireann. We cannot overestimate the hurt that has been inflicted on individuals and families over the decades because they did not conform to that very narrow definition of a family based in marriage. I was struck by Senator Garvey's earlier contribution. This is personal for many people, including the thousands of women who found themselves pregnant and parented alone, the women who were abandoned by the fathers of their children and left to parent alone, the men who raised children on their own, the grandparents, the people I know who are choosing to have children on their own and the many other types of families in this country. The symbolism of the change in our Constitution would have a profound impact for those families as they feel recognised.

There are also practical implications. Senator Wall already mentioned the Johnny O'Meara case. It is wonderful to see the Supreme Court's judgment today. In reading the judgment, it appears that the argument is all the stronger now for the constitutional broadening of the definition of a family to include all durable relationships. We cannot leave it to chance that there will be some other part of the social welfare or tax codes that will require somebody to go to court to prove their family rights. I listened to Senator McDowell's contribution. Far be it from me to challenge him, given that I am not a lawyer, but I am not sure if I correctly picked up what he said, which was that the outcome of the case is to effectively recognise non-marital relationships outside of marriage and civil partnerships in the Constitution. When I fly through the 90 pages of the judgment, and I am only flying through them, it is not clear to me that is what the judgment does. Instead, it recognises that parents should not be discriminated against whether they are married or unmarried. At the heart of the case about the widower's contributory pension was the question of whether that pension is intended merely to support the marriage or if it can also support the children of the relationship. That was at the heart of Mr. Justice Heslin's judgment in the High Court, which was then contested in the Supreme Court. Widower's and widow's pensions were introduced in 1935. At that time, it was about the alleviation of hardships accruing from the risk to all persons who were exposed as a result of the death.

We have the O'Meara judgment today, which has found there needs to be legislative change. The key point is that we need to ask about all those other situations. There may be other situations that we do not yet know about whereby a family and the children of a deceased person are effectively discriminated against because their parents were not married.

A wide-ranging conversation about our tax code will have to take place if this constitutional amendment is passed. That is particularly the case with regard to the treatment of income tax for married couples, unmarried couples and couples in a civil partnership. Of course, inheritance tax will have to be considered and capital acquisitions tax will be another important area. It is not hard to imagine that there will be a challenge to the partial individualisation afforded by marriage status in the context of the tax credit and the standard rate threshold we currently have in our income tax system. A message needs to go out that while the conversation needs to take place, there will be an attempt by some to ask what is the point of marriage anymore. For many of us, marriage is not just about the contractual, taxation and inheritance arrangements into which many of us enter. It is also about faith, commitment and values that some people wish to express and others do not. It is important to note that commitment to marriage is still being expressed in the Constitution. I fear that some will try to say that the Constitution no longer recognises marriage as a particular form when it still does.I warmly welcome the proposed changes. Obviously we have concerns, which we will come to later, regarding the referendum on care but I support what is being done with regard to the family.