Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The Government is committed to delivering an ambitious programme of family justice reform, including the publication of the Family Justice Strategy and the Family Courts Bill 2022. The Strategy puts children at the centre of the system, and emphasises, amongst other things, the need to ensure they are listened to and heard and their views given due regard, in line with constitutional obligations and rights.

The Family Justice Strategy, published in November last year, sets out a vision for a family justice system of the future - a system that will focus on the needs and rights of children and which helps them and their families obtain earlier appropriate resolutions in a simpler, fairer, more effective way. It aims to achieve this through the implementation of over 50 actions across nine goals. The Strategy is foundational in nature, recognising the many issues that currently exist within the system and outlining the steps needed to move towards a family justice system that is streamlined and user-friendly, and which supports and protects children and their families.

The Strategy contains a number of actions which stress the importance of children and the need to ensure their welfare and best interests are considered in conjunction with their constitutional rights.

In May this year, my Department published a policy paper on how to address the concept of parental alienation, following a public consultation and independent research into the issue. Both the policy paper and the research report recognise that parental alienation is a highly contested and divisive concept. The papers also acknowledge a close proximity between allegations of parental alienation and accusations of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence (DSGBV) Despite the highly contested nature of the concept, there was consensus in the public consultation that the means to address parental alienation lie in improvements to the Irish family courts and family justice system. The policy paper puts forward six recommendations to address parental alienation. All of these recommendations are also reflected in the Family Justice Strategy which ultimately aims to make the Irish family justice system work better for everyone engaging with it, but particularly for those who need additional supports and protections, such as domestic violence victims and vulnerable parents and children.

The Department has also commenced a review to examine the role of expert reports in the family law process, the commissioning and availability of these reports and their content and use. The review is advancing and is expected to be completed towards the end of the year.

Alongside the implementation of the Strategy, and an important element of the family justice reforms, is the Family Courts Bill 2022. The Family Courts Bill provides for the establishment of a Family Court as divisions within the existing court structures, each family court division dealing with family law matters as appropriate to its jurisdiction.

The Bill provides a set of guiding principles to help ensure that the Family Court system will make the best interests of the child a primary consideration in all family law proceedings, operate in an efficient and user-friendly manner, and encourage active case management by the courts. These guiding principles encourage the use of alternative dispute resolution where appropriate, promote good case management practice, ensuring that proceedings are conducted as far as possible in a user-friendly manner, and minimising the cost of proceedings where feasible.

The Bill provides for the assignment of judges with appropriate specialist knowledge to each of the family court divisions and for ongoing professional training in the area of family law. It is intended that the Family Court will sit to hear family law proceedings in a different building or room from that in which other court sittings are held or on different days or at different times from other court sittings.

Both the Family Courts Bill and the Family Justice Strategy recognise that children and families should be at the centre of the system. These initiatives mark the beginning of the reform of how our family justice system operates, to try to make it work better for everyone engaging with it, but particularly for those who need additional supports and protections, such as domestic violence victims or vulnerable parents and children.