Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senators for facilitating an early date for consideration of this important legislation. The Bill seeks to improve and update our civil registration legislation and associated registration processes. It will allow parents and bereaved families to use an online registration facility to register a birth, death or stillbirth online. In addition, the Bill proposes to update the criteria for stillbirths, revise procedures where a death has been referred to a coroner and provide for timely notification of deaths to the State.

The new online registration service will be available to persons who have an authenticated standard authentication framework environment, SAFE, identity and a verified MyGovID account. It will operate in parallel with the existing in-person civil registration service provided by the HSE. The requirement for an online option became evident both during the Covid-19 pandemic, when it was not possible to allow physical attendance by parents at an HSE civil registration office, and, more recently, when registration staff could not access internal IT systems during the cyberattack on the HSE. Providing another method of civil registration, as proposed in the Bill, will provide for resilience in the registration process in the event of any future incidents and ensure registration can occur at a time and place convenient to members of the public.

In addition to the online changes to the death registration process, the Bill will provide, for the first time, a method for the notification of a death to the State. This is essential in ensuring an accurate and timely gathering of death information for the State and will allow important information on deaths to be available for analysis and future systems planning. There are proposed changes to the way deaths that are reportable to a coroner under the Coroners Act 1962 are registered. The Bill will allow a coroner to refer a death back to the hospital or institution if he or she determines that the circumstances around the death do not warrant an investigation or inquiry by the coroner. Where the coroner is investigating the death, the Bill provides that an interim death certificate can be issued to bereaved families confirming the death of their loved one.This interim death certificate will ensure that families can deal with the administrative burdens around the estate of the deceased while the coroner completes their duties in relation to the death. When the coroner completes their duties, the Bill reduces the amount of information or required particulars around the death that the coroner needs to provide to a registrar. The remaining required particulars will be provided by the next of kin of the deceased. This will assist the registration service in capturing all the required particulars of a death that are set out in the Civil Registration Act 2004.

The Bill also proposes to make changes to the area of stillbirths. There have been ongoing clinical advances in neonatal care, both nationally and internationally, and in the context of these improved outcomes, the HSE’s national women and infants health programme, NWIHP, has recommended that the definition of stillbirth, as set out in the Civil Registration Act 2004, should be updated. The Bill, therefore, intends to lower the threshold for assigning stillborn status by reducing the gestational age limit from 24 to 23 weeks, the minimum weight from 500 g to 400 g and making improved provision for stillbirths where multiple births are concerned. Access to the register of stillbirths will also be broadened to additional family members. A new record of stillbirths, to allow those families who wish to allow public access to the details of their stillborn child, will be created. This provision will ensure open access to some records while also recognising and respecting the wishes of those parents who wish to retain the private status of their child’s record in the register of stillbirths.

There are also other provisions in the Bill that I intend to speak on as I address the individual sections of the Bill, which I propose to do now. Section 1 provides for the Short Title, construction, collective citation and commencement of the Act. Section 2 outlines the definitions of certain terms used throughout the Act. Section 3 provides for a change in the criteria determining stillbirths by reducing the gestational age limit from 24 to 23 weeks, the minimum weight from 500 g to 400 g and making improved provision for stillbirths where multiple births are concerned. These amendments address recommendations received from the Minister for Health and align stillbirth registration with current foetal viability outcomes. This section also provides for a technical amendment to address the need to rectify conflicting insertions of section 2(2)(g), relating to marriages and marriages of convenience, into the Civil Registration Act 2004.

Section 4 makes a technical amendment to section 8 of Act of 2004. This will allow an t-árd chláraitheoir to issue guidance on the operation of the civil registration service to superintendent registrars and registrars who are employees of the HSE and have operational responsibility for the operation of the civil registration service on behalf of the State. Section 5 provides for the online registration of a birth. The online facility will be developed as part of the MyWelfare suite of services, delivered by the Department of Social Protection. Online registration will enable parents to avail of an additional method by which the birth or stillbirth of a child can be registered. The current in-person registration service operated by the HSE throughout the State will be retained.

Section 6 provides for amendments to facilitate the interaction of the national donor-conceived register with the register of births, as set out in the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015. This change will ensure that the information to be provided by the Minister for Health under the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 will be sent to an t-árd chláraitheoir. Section 7 provides for technical amendments to section 25A where there is a failure to agree on a surname from both an in-person and an online birth registration. Section 8 provides for the online registration of stillbirths. This legislation will allow parents to register the stillbirth in a similar manner to online births and deaths. This service will be rolled out in line with the addressing of technical issues in relation to the uploading of a medical certificate provided to the parents of a stillborn child.

Section 9 provides for the notification of a birth to the civil registration service by a hospital, or if the child was not born in a hospital or other institution, a parent, midwife or a medical practitioner who attended the birth, within five working days of the birth. Notification of a birth is a prerequisite to registration of the birth by parents and is an essential control mechanism to ensure that there is independent confirmation that a birth has occurred. The notification also provides the related particulars of the parents. The duty to notify the registration service of the birth by the parents when a child is born outside a maternity hospital or without medical supervision is welcomed by the HSE registration staff alongside the provision that a registrar can request certain required information from the parents in relation to such a birth.

Section 10 provides for the establishment of a record of stillbirths. Where there is an entry in the register of stillbirths, certain persons can apply to an t-árd chláraitheoir to enter details of that entry into the record of stillbirths. Unlike the register of stillbirths, the record of stillbirths will not be closed to the public. This will facilitate those parents who wish to have information in respect of their stillborn child made publicly available. It will be possible for persons to apply for certificates to be printed from the record of stillbirths.

Section 11 provides for an additional method to register deaths using the online facility mentioned previously in relation to the registration of a birth or stillbirth. It also provides for an amendment to the time afforded to the relatives of a deceased person to formally register a death from three months to 28 days from the date of death. This section will help, in association with section 14, which provides for a process of notification of a death, to ensure more timely data on deaths. It also clarifies that the duty of a qualified informant to register a death is contingent on the death not being referred to a coroner under the Coroners Act 1962.

Section 12 provides for instances where a coroner considers the circumstances of a death referred to them under the Coroners Act 1962 and determines that the death can be referred back to the hospital, institution or medical practitioner without the need for the coroner to carry out an inquiry, post mortem or investigation. This reflects the practice whereby a coroner is satisfied that the death referred to them can be registered by the family under section 37 of the Civil Registration Act 2004 with a medical-certified cause of death certificate issued to them by a medical practitioner. This section will also provide for a prescribed set of required particulars to be included in a coroner’s report, with the remaining required particulars of the death furnished to the registrar by the next of kin of the deceased.

Section 13 will enable a death that is referred to a coroner to be entered in the register of deaths before the coroner has determined all the facts of the case. A family member can request a corroborated facts of death certificate from the coroner, bring it to the local registration service and receive an interim death certificate containing the details of the death as confirmed by the coroner. The cause of death and any other facts that remain to be determined by a coroner will be added to the death record when the coroner’s investigation has been completed and this will finalise the death registration process. Importantly, it enables families of the deceased to receive death certificates while a coroner investigation is ongoing.

Section 14 introduces a requirement that all deaths occurring within the State are to be notified to an t-árd chláraitheoir within five working days of a death occurring. This provision is similar to the provision for the notification of births and will serve to ensure for the first time that the State is notified when a death occurs. Notification of a death is an essential step in enabling the functionality of the online death registration process this Bill establishes. Section 15 provides for a broadening of access to the stillbirth register, both to families of a stillborn child who wish to search or receive copies of entries and, to assist in the provision of searches and certificates, the staff of the civil registration service. Currently, only the parents of a child recorded in the register or staff of the General Register Office have access to the register.

Section 16 provides for amendments to section 64 to allow the existing mechanisms for corrections and cancellations of entries in a register to apply to entries in a register made using the online registration process. Section 17 provides for amendments to section 68 to enable certificates from entries in the online registration process to be used as evidence of a birth, stillbirth or death. Section 18 provides for references to in-person registration of births, stillbirths and deaths in other Acts or enactments to include online registrations, where applicable. Section 19 provides for amendments to section 69 dealing with offences to reflect other proposed changes in this Bill to introduce online registration services. Section 20 provides for amendments to section 70 dealing with penalties to reflect other proposed changes in this Bill to introduce online registration services. Section 21 provides for amendments to section 73 dealing with the collection of vital statistics to reflect other proposed changes in this Bill to introduce online registration services.

Section 22 provides for amendments to the First Schedule to include required particulars provided in the online registration environment. Section 23 provides for an amendment to section 51 of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 to incorporate the revised definition of “stillbirth” in section 3 and to ensure any future amendments to the stillbirth definition will be automatically reflected in the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005. Section 24 provides for an amendment to section 6 of the Civil Registration (Amendment) Act 2014. Section 6 of the Civil Registration (Amendment) Act 2014 will place a duty on parents registering a birth to provide information about the father of the child, whether the parents of the child are married to each other or not, except in certain specified instances.

There were two amendments introduced in Dáil Éireann that have been adopted and are now included in the Bill before us today.There were two amendments introduced in Dáil Éireann that were adopted and they are now included in the Bill. The first introduced the reduced set of required particulars that a coroner needs to provide under the Coroner's Act, which I have referred to in respect of section 12 of the Bill. The second amendment is a technical one and is covered under section 25 of the Bill. Section 25 provides for the deletion of section 6 of the Civil Registration Act 2019. Section 6(a) will be deleted as it is no longer required. The functions of the subsection have been superseded by the insertion of section 12 of the new Bill.

As I stated in the Dáil, some major amendments to the civil registration process are proposed in this Bill. The Bill seeks to modernise the system of civil registration, which has remained relatively unchanged over the past 100 years. Improvements to the ways citizens interact with the civil registration service will be introduced by making use of technology and modernising the provision of important public services by the State. This Bill also legislates for important registration provisions that affect the lives of those who have suffered pain and loss through the death of a loved one or the loss of a stillborn child.

I look forward to hearing Senators' views and working with them to make progress on this important legislation as quickly as possible.