As a relative newcomer to this House, having been here 12 months now, I deplore the fact that this Estimate will, effectively, finish at 4 o'clock this afternoon. It is not the Minister's fault and I am not blaming him. But we are talking about what I would regard as one of the major Departments of State with enormous functions from security to law reform. We are talking about a Department the Estimate for which is in excess of £241 million. In addition to the Minister speaking there will be no more than two or three other Deputies in the House contributing to the debate on the Estimate for this Department. I deplore that fact.
The manner in which we are dealing with Estimates in this House requires urgent re-examination. I know I am echoing the sentiments of predecessors of mine in this House from all parties. We have now reached the stage where we are turning this House into an irrelevancy. We have inherited the Westminster model of parliament without seeing fit to even introduce the reforms that have been introduced into that model over the years. The time limits on the Estimates debate of the Department of Justice is a very real indicator of the inept and peculiar manner in which we deal with enormous sums of the public finances.
I would regard an Estimate debate as effectively having two principal functions. First, it gives the Minister an opportunity to tell the House how much expenditure will be incurred in various sections of his Department over the year. It also gives the Minister an opportunity to indicate to the House what new steps he intends taking or what the policies will be within his Department, in particular, in the context of the Department of Justice, what areas of reform, be they legislative reforms or administrative reforms, are within the responsibility of that Minister that will be dealt with in the year. It is the only time in the year that this House is given an opportunity of discussing in general the policies that we would like to see a Minister implementing in his Department. In the context of the Department of Justice it is the only opportunity we get to discuss general policy matters in relation to the Garda, in relation to the courts, in relation to our prison system, in relation to law reforms. The only other times at which we can raise these issues is either by specific Dáil Question or when particular legislation comes before the House, and then of course the debate is confined to the legislation.
Because of the limited time I have at my disposal as spokesman on law reform for Fine Gael I want to confine my remarks to that area, in that area the Minister's speech is more remarkable for its omissions than for its substantive content. I was extremely disappointed with the speech delivered by the Minister on the Estimates debate. It contains no indication of any nature of any areas of reform that the Minister intends to introduce in the coming year. We have heard promises, and comments have been made about different legislation some of which has been commented on by the Minister outside this House. But we have had no specific proposals brought by the Minister before this House that within the next 12 months we are going to enact legislation in particular areas and introduce reforms in particular areas.
In the area of law reform a vast amount of work has to be done. I apreciate and understand that the Minister may have some difficulties in this area because he is responsible for the enormous area covered by the Department of Justice. Indeed, in recent years the security area, for very obvious reasons, has been a matter of major concern to all Ministers. The area of law reform is of grave concern to many people and our failure to reform whole series of laws is adding a great deal to unhappiness and misery and creating tremendous problems for the future which are eventually going to have to be tackled by this House.
The Minister's difficulty in dealing with this area is compounded by the failure of the Taoiseach to appoint a Minister of State with responsibility for law reform, a responsibility that the present Minister for Justice had in a previous Fianna Fáil administration. The failure to appoint a Minister for law reform is indicative of the failure of the Government and of Fianna Fáil to fully appreciate and understand the need for and importance of reforming vast areas of our law.
What areas need reforming? Under the Whips' agreement I understand I have approximately five minutes to cover them. What areas require reform that are not referred to at any stage in his speech by the Minister? There is the whole area of illegitimacy, the concept of children being discriminated against because of the circumstances of their birth, and the way we regard one child as inferior to another and discriminate against that child in a whole series of ways within our legal system. Reform of this area of law is long overdue.
The Irish Commission for Justice and Peace in a recent statement on this matter said that there is a general obligation in justice for everyone, including Christians, that no one should be stigmatised and made to feel inferior because of the circumstances of their birth, for which they carry no responsibility. In response to that statement the Minister made a comment outside this House, which he subsequently repeated in reply to a Dáil question, to the effect that in general he accepts that the law in relation to illegitimacy should be reformed. If that is the case why has he not stated that legislation will be introduced in this area and why has he not promised a Bill before the end of this year? The reason is that, as in other areas of law reform, this ministerial responsibility has been abdicated to the Law Reform Commission. The buck has been passed to them and as yet they have been unable to come up with any specific proposals.
Then there is the problem in relation to the law of nullity. Many hundreds of couples have obtained Church decrees of annulment and in the context of their religious beliefs they no longer regard themselves as married. A number of them have since remarried in the Church. There is an enormous discrepancy between the number of Church annulments and the number of civil annulments. In the period 1976-1980 there were 462 decrees of annulment granted by the marriage tribunals of the Roman Catholic Church while in the same period there were only 17 civil decrees granted. We have no proposals for law reform in this area. Why is this the case? The answer is that the Law Reform Commission are examining the issue. Again political responsibility has been abdicated.
It is interesting to note that in the first report produced by the Law Reform Commission in 1976 they stated that they felt there was no reason for them to report on the law of nullity because the Attorney General's Office had done so in some detail. We now note that the Attorney General's report has been referred to the commission for another report. The commission say they have difficulties regarding what should be done because the decisions now required are of a political nature. These are decisions which the Law Reform Commission cannot make and are not statutorily required to make. We are not merely talking about lawyers' law in this area but the need to decide what type of reform is necessary.
The Minister's speech does not contain a specific reference or suggestion regarding the reform of our courts system. The only reference made is to the fact that the Minister's Department have obtained additional buildings in order to provide a certain number of new district courts or circuit courts. There is no suggestion in relation to the family law area that the Minister might even be considering the provision of family courts so that we could have a coherent and unified court system dealing with family problems instead of the disparate, overlapping and sometimes contradictory jurisdictions we have at present. Why has the Minister not proposed family courts? It was suggested by Fianna Fáil during successive elections that they were in favour of family courts, yet it appears there is no intention to introduce the necessary legislation.
It was even more depressing to hear the one comment in the Minister's speech in regard to the Children's Court system. The Children's Court in Dublin Castle was criticised for many years as a facility which should be replaced by a very different form of court. The Minister's only comment was that due to the fact that a portion of the building in Dublin Castle was condemned, the Children's Court had to be moved to Morgan Place and will be moving to a different building in the not-too-distant future.
It is depressing that the Minister's speech does not contain any reference to the Task Force on Child Care Services whose report contained comprehensive recommendations not merely for changing children's law in the area of taking children into care but in relation to the whole sphere of juvenile justice. There were suggestions in the minority report for the introduction of a different form of court system and in the majority report there were concrete recommendations for the introduction of a number of changes in children's law generally. I do not understand why the Minister's speech did not contain a reference to this Report.
It is my understanding that the Minister for Health intends to introduce legislation to implement some portions of the report in a Children's Bill. Will that Bill deal with the whole area of juvenile justice and the criminal responsibility of children? Will it provide a new form of court structure to deal with children both who need to be taken into care and who come before our courts? Is it intended that this Bill will be introduced solely under the auspices of the Department of Health or have there been discussions and consultations between the Department of Justice and the Department of Health as to what is to be contained in this Bill?