First, let me compliment the Minister on his good humour. It is refreshing when we can approach even a serious matter like this in a good humoured way. I was guilty of making some cynical and facetious remarks as the Minister went along on his thesis about the healthy marriage. In effect the Minister is penalising the healthy marriage and providing benefit for the pathological marriage, as I hope to show in a moment.
In all seriousness, what Deputy Colley is saying here, and what we as an Opposition are trying to draw attention to, is that there is an anomaly here which can be avoided. Admittedly it may have a threshold effect in one section. I want to dispose of two things the Minister said in his good humoured concluding remarks. We recognise the generosity of the thresholds. Let there be no mistake about this. He recognises the comparison with other countries, but this is not the point. We are disagreeing with the whole code of taxation and this Bill in particular on a certain principle I need not go over. On this specific question, we feel that even though it possibly involves some increase in the joint thresholds for a married couple, if you care to look at it from the Minister's point of view, the advantages otherwise are outweighed. Remember, the revenue to the Minister is not all that much. All that is involved is 1 per cent of £40,000—£400 in the year, if I have done my sums wrong when I am very apt to do my sums wrong when I am on my feet here. The point is that, as on the first amendment, and I will not delay the House with repetition, if the proprietary rights in the property are separate, why should the taxation not be separate?
Everything that was said on Deputy Colley's amendment No. 3 is germane to this amendment. Following on that premise that those arguments apply there are two parts to this amendment. The first part of the amendment implies—it is a very important implication—that paragraph (a) of subsection (1) is deleted. In fact, it is deleted. That means then that the wife is to be treated as sui juris and separate from her husband for the purposes of property ownership and property taxation. She is already in many ways so treated from the point of view of property ownership. If there is not sharing there is the benefit.
The peculiar consequence of the Minister's position is that, if you have a healthy marriage the threshold is cut by £40,000, plus the house, but if you have a pathological marriage, that is a marriage that has broken down and husband and wife are separated under an order of the Court of competent jurisdiction, or by deed of separation, or separated in circumstances where the separation is likely to be permanent, they have the benefit. The pathological marriage gets the benefit and the healthy one the Minister was extolling a moment ago is, in effect, at a disadvantage. Purposely, in recognition of what the Minister has done with his threshold, I have not used the word “penalty”. I said “disadvantage”.
Let us take the pathological marriage first. Thanks be to God, so far in this country, notwithstanding all our economic ills, one may safely say that the bulk of the community are healthy. That does not mean that we have not got a big problem with the health services for those who are unhealthy. In the same way, where marriage is concerned, we have got to recognise the fact that marriages do break down. I am now going to confine myself to (a) where they are separated under an order of the court of competent jurisdiction or by deed of separation because, on the earlier amendment, I referred to (b) and the possible difficulties inherent in the concept of permanent separation.
Referring specifically to (a) and, incidentially, to (b) where there is a separation and a breakdown, there will again be a benefit under this Bill and there is a direct instigation, therefore, in so far as economic factors are an instigation, towards the resolution of matrimonial problems by such a breakdown. It has not been unknown in history where large amounts of money are involved, and the Minister has been saying that it is only large amounts that are involved here, for artificial situations to have been contrived, where even the healthy sentiments the Minister extolled earlier on are sacrificed for more mundane reasons founded on economic causes. That is the first point. There is an incitement here if there is a disadvantage—I have avoided the word "penalty"—to the healthy marriage. There certainly seems to be a premium put in this Bill in principle on the unhealthy marriage.
Let us now come to a few practical points. No doubt the Revenue Commissioners are like a very experienced medical practitioner; they have heard it all and come across it all before and they know all the diseases to which tax administration is prone. Perhaps the Minister can give me an answer on this as I have not had the opportunity of looking it up from a legal point of view. As regards section 1, paragraph (a)—I have already spoken about paragraph (b)—and amendment No. 3, if two people are separated by order of the court or by a deed of separation the primary purpose of either the order or the deed is to legitimise or, rather, neutralise the conjugal rights of both partners and at the same time, if necessary, restrain one from molesting the other if the situation calls for that. So far as I know—let me be corrected if I am wrong—if the two separated partners have no particular objection the court does not say they must not meet one another and neither does the deed of separation.
This could raise an interesting situation in this modern, liberal world where people are less concerned with the conventions of the past. In fact, apart from being a disincentive to matrimony at all, legislation of this nature, plus the current trends, appears to have the one and only purpose of legitimising children and even that is, unfortunately, apparently becoming of less importance than it used to be. With that almost as the sole counterpart, for anybody with property who is affected in this way, a division of the property through either the avoidance of a formal marriage or connivance by getting relevant deeds or orders of the court and thereafter exercising the free human consent could give rise to an interesting situation. I do not know how this would appear in a constitutional case with regard to human rights.
We had a very interesting one that led to a rather surprising perambulation of the Taoiseach in this Chamber on one occasion arising from somewhat similar causes. I am wondering whether, just for the sake of recognising what the facts are, we are not wandering down the leafy lane of legal uncertainty. This may seem farfetched. Nevertheless, I say it in all seriousness even though I follow the Minister in the cheerful tone, which I am glad he adopted, when he was dealing with this.
I am old-fashioned enough to feel the dangers of these things. I am social enough to be worried about the consequences of provisions in a Bill like that in particular circumstances affecting the very class that might be prone to this kind of thing. I do not know if "moral" is the word to use, but "social" certainly is the word to use. Apart from the property aspect which we dealt with on the earlier amendment, there is a trend which will follow from the fact that the wife and husband are being integrated at a disadvantage. If they are separated, or if you avoid the legitimate relationship, by device or otherwise, this Bill will favour such a situation. For that reason I support the first part of Deputy Colley's amendment, namely the deletion.
As regards Deputy Colley's amendment, the Minister might accuse him of being liberal and I might accuse him of being "a chauvinistic what" because he is giving the custody prima facie and in the first instance to the male. Even Deputy Colley prefers the male in this amendment.
