Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

-----to always happen, as the O'Meara judgment shows. My amendments are being proposed because as an increasingly troubled society, we should be promoting marriage and not demoting it.

I will go back to the invocation of personal experience, and I respect everybody's personal experience here, including my own. If I say that marriage breakdown and divorce cause a lot of pain to children, am I judging those people who have had to go through that experience? Of course, I am not. I am not denying for an instant people's desire to do the best they can and their best efforts in their individual situation but unless we can talk about what institutions work well and can, on the evidence, be to the benefit of children, we are only really caring about what adults want. Sadly, I see so much of that in legislative and policy initiatives these days where it really seems that the bottom line is children's rights get the lip service but what the adults ultimately want gets the power.

As I said, these amendments are being proposed because as an increasingly troubled society, we should be promoting marriage and not demoting it. Our Government and many NGOs show little appreciation for the value of marriage. Regarding the point made by Senator Craughwell, if any NGO in receipt of any amount of Government money campaigns on one side or the other of this referendum, the first question it should be asked by the media is whether its receipt of Government funding compromises its ability to be a fully honest and independent broker in the assessment of this referendum proposal. Every time the NGO shows up in the media, it should be asked that question because we should always declare our agenda. In business, you declare a conflict of interest-----