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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 14 May 1986

Vol. 366 No. 5

An Bille um an Deichiú Leasú ar an mBunreacht, 1986 : An Dara Céim (Atógáil). Tenth Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1986 : Second Stage (Resumed).

Atairgeadh an Cheist: "Go léifear an Bille an Dara hUair."
Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Before the Adjournment I was saying society is changing and, if divorce is introduced, it will merely be a reflection of those changing values in our society and not any co-ordinated plot by a minority to subvert the family and the State.

I now refer to the proposals indicating that the arrangements for judicial separation and divorce will in future be dealt with by a family court presided over by one or more judges of the Circuit Court specially assigned for the purpose and that it will have powers to make orders in relation to maintenance, including maintenance of children and property owned by the spouses, including the family home.

Much has been written about the question of family courts. Indeed a majority of the submissions that were made to the Working Party on Women's Affairs and Family Law Reform, of which I was chairperson, raised this question. That committee, in their report of just over a year ago, considered that the question of family courts was of very great significance. They noted that the family courts proposal is not, of course, confined to this jurisdiction — that in Britain the Finer report made recommendations in 1974 for the setting up of family courts.

However, in Australia and in some other countries the family court has been in place for a number of years. We have, of course, the wide-ranging recommendations on a new family court structure made in the report of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Marriage Breakdown which was debated at length in this House. Of relevance too is the fact that the Law Reform Commission report on divorce a mensa et thoro made a number of recommendations bearing on the same matter.

The commission recommended that in proceedings for judicial separation the legislation should provide that the court should proceed without undue formality, that neither the judge nor the legal representatives should robe, that the order of address of these representatives and of the parties should be at the court's discretion and that the court should have power to call any witnesses, expert or other, additional to those suggested or called by the parties. They recommended that if adversarial procedures are not to apply, there should be a positive obligation on the court to inquire into the case, and not simply to permit the case to proceed only on whatever basis the parties may choose to present it. The legislation should, they said, require the court to discharge this function. The commission also recommended that if proper counselling services are available, whether provided by private agencies or the State, it could be made a necessary preliminary to the institution of court proceedings that recourse be had by the spouses to those services.

These recommendations would clearly require to be borne in mind during the preparation of the legislation to be proposed. But I think most Deputies would agree, for example, that any formal compulsory counselling procedures would not be desirable since there is a weight of opinion to the effect that compulsion in that area is pointless.

I particularly welcome, therefore, the approach that the Government would take on this matter; that approach is that the family court would require, in the first instance, whether counselling services have been or should be availed of by the spouses to assist them in attempting a reconciliation and would have power to adjourn the proceeedings so that recourse may be had to these services where it considers it necessary or appropriate to do so.

Should reconciliation prove to be impossible a further process, that is a mediation process, will follow. Mediation — or as it is sometimes also referred to, conciliation — is a process whereby a third party, a skilled mediator, brings a husband and wife together to work out their own problems when their marriage has failed. The objective is not to provide somebody else's answer to the couple's problems. This is the important point. Decisions may have to be made about the children, the house, the bills outstanding and the future generally. While the decisions to be made must be the couple's own decisions, mediation can be of very great help.

In the first place it can assist the parties in identifying the options that are realistically open to them and in weighing up those options before final decisions are taken. It can assist in dispelling misunderstandings and mutual suspicions by bringing them face to face with the support of an impartial adviser. It can encourage them, through facing the painful issues, in taking control of their own lives. It can assist in the maintenance of a parental role where their children are concerned and in an understanding of the need for them to give and to go on giving moral and other support to the children. The skilled mediator can work through all aspects of their case with the parties while reinforcing their sense of their own personal dignity and helping them to look with confidence to the future, whatever the outcome.

Both the proposed counselling service and the mediation process that I have mentioned should play an important role in the proposed arrangements for judicial separation and divorce because, apart from special provision to be made for existing cases of long standing separation, it is proposed that before a spouse will be entitled to apply for a decree dissolving the marriage, the spouses will first have availed themselves of the procedure for a judicial separation or for making a separation agreement a rule of court. It is clear from what I have just said that a service of the kind to be provided by the pilot family mediation scheme will be an integral part of the Government's proposals on marriage, separation and divorce. I take this opportunity to state that the pilot scheme, which is being finalised in the Department of Justice, will be an out of court scheme and will be in operation very soon. A co-ordinator has already been chosen and mediators are to be appointed. The pilot scheme will operate as a training body to ensure that trained mediators will be available in the coming year.

In conclusion, I have every confidence that the Irish electorate are alert to the need for these changes and will consider rationally and maturely all aspects of the reality of marriage breakdown. I will be urging a yes vote because I believe the choice of getting a divorce should be available to people in their own country and because to do anything else would be inconsistent with the commitment I have given to many couples whose marriages have broken down over the years, both before I came into this House and since I was elected.

Our Constitution binds the State to recognise the family as a natural institution founded on marriage possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, which are antecedent and superior to all positive law. The family based on marriage is the natural, primary and fundamental unit group in society, is the necessary basis of social order and is indispensable to the welfare of the nation and the State. The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of marriage on which the family is founded and to protect it against attack.

Those who are responsible for these provisions in our Constitution and the people of this country, who, by their vote, enacted the Constitution in 1937 regarded marriage as a life long commitment. This Bill proposes to change that commitment. Divorce abolishes the legal right to life long indissoluble marriage, and what we are now being asked to do through this proposed legislation is to accept a fundamental change in our way of life as we know it, a change which will undoubtedly weaken the stability of the family and the quality of family life, and will severely damage the future well being of society.

Let us be very clear that the White Paper entitled Statement of Government's Intentions with regard to Marriage, Separation and Divorce has no constitutional status. The aspirations it contains have no constitutional standing, nor will they if the referendum is carried. What would matter then is what the referendum Bill contains and perhaps at a later date the Supreme Court's interpretation of this new addition to the Constitution.

After divorce and remarriage, if the proposed amendment to the Constitution is passed, the second marriage will have all the rights prescribed in the Constitution because divorce will have a constitutional status and all supports which were there for the first family will devolve on the second family.

The family courts to be set up by this Government may allocate resources, for example, a proportion of the former husband's income to his first wife and family but, because the Constitution declares that the family rights are antecedent and superior to all positive law, and as this will apply to the second marriage only, the second wife could contest the first wife's right to the allowance on the grounds that problems arising from living on a reduced income, allied to the strain and bitterness and resentment arising from the knowledge that part of the husband's income is being paid to the first wife, endanger the marriage and the State will then be constitutionally obliged to guard it with special care. After the divorce the first wife is no longer a dependant. In the event of a married man dying who was divorced and married a second time, the second wife will be entitled to the widow's pension and the first wife, very often, will exist on social assistance.

There is no gainsaying that there are severe marital problems to be found in our society, that, sadly, marriages do break down in Ireland and that all those involved are entitled to and deserving of our deep sympathy and compassion. We already have laws to help alleviate the problems and difficulties arising from marital breakdown. In cases where the marriage becomes intolerable and the husband and wife wish to separate and live apart, they have judicial separation, legal separation and civil nullity available to them, but problems arising from marital breakdown, such as maintenance, succession, family home, custody of children and so on are resolved. These laws can be improved further and, coupled with a positive programme to support and strengthen marriage and with a concerted effort to tackle the factors which cause marriages to fail, will result in the alleviation of much of the suffering and hardship involved and will go a long way towards meeting the needs of the breakdown of marriage.

Therefore, I emphasise that the fundamental issue in our discussion on this Bill is not separation, which is already available here, but the right of a person to remarry while that person's spouse is still alive and the inevitable consequences of such change on the stability of marriage. What may appear to be a relief for the few may cause disruption for the many, including many of those involved in divorce. The Government White Paper states that applications for divorce with the right to remarry will be made to the family court and that divorce may not be granted unless the court is satisfied that the marriage has failed, that the failure has continued for a period or periods of at least five years during which the parties have been separted in accordance with the separation procedures set out in the White Paper and that there is no reasonable possibility of a reconciliation between the parties.

There is no reference to separation in the Bill before the House, only the failure of marriage, nor will the people in this referendum be voting on the separation issue. Should the proposal in this referendum be accepted, people married and living together for over five years could claim that their marriage had failed and could apply for divorce as of that moment. The Government state that they will bring in legislation which will provide that a period or periods of not less than five year's separation will be required before an application for divorce will be entertained.

I must emphasise that, as the Government are introducing a separation period condition through legislation, this Government or any future Government can introduce further legislation reducing the separation period to three years or to one year or abolishing the separation condition altogether. Should the separation period be abolished in future legislation — and trends in other countries where divorce is available show that this will inevitably happen here — then, as I mentioned earlier, any couple married for over five years could apply for divorce. The five year separation period will not be part of the Constitution and will be a matter for the Oireachtas only should the referendum proposal be accepted.

What is proposed by the Government is by no stretch of the imagination a restricted divorce law. Statements that it will be necessary to have a further referendum to change the five year separation period are not correct. Should the referendum proposal be accepted, any Government can have the separation period changed by simply introducing the necessary legislation and having it passed through the Dáil and Seanad. In the divorce poll taken recently, 26 per cent of those interviewed are reported as saying that the five year period specified in the Government's proposals is too long. That is a sizeable group, and we can be assured that, should the amendment be carried, that group will immediately commence a campaign to have the five year separation period reduced or abolished.

Divorce has been introduced to many countries throughout the world and we here have at least the opportunity to assess whether divorce laws elsewhere solved marital problems or whether they simply proved to be a solution to some problems only to replace them with more serious and more intractable problems. Those who advocate divorce state that divorce does not create instability in marriage. Experience in countries where divorce is available does not bear that out. The rapid escalation of divorce in these countries underlines the fact that divorce breeds divorce and in some countries has led to what is tantamount to a breakdown of marriage as an institution.

The law permitting divorce was first introduced into England in 1857. Adultery was the sole ground on which it could be granted and then only to the innocent party. It was thought at the time that the divorce law would cater for a small number of hard cases only. Gradually the number increased. Within 18 months of its becoming law the number increased from three to 300. The man largely responsible for the 1857 Act, Lord Campbell, said: "I have been sitting two days in the divorce court, and, like Frankenstein, I am afraid of the monster I have called into existence. There seems some reason to dread that the prophecies of those who opposed the change may be fulfilled by a lamentable multiplication of divorces." His words have proved only too true. By 1978 the number of divorces in England had jumped to 143,667 which represented 39 divorces per 100 marriages in England and Wales. In 1983 the figure was 146,669 which represented two divorces in every five marriages. In 1984 the number of marriages filed for divorce was 178,940, up 6 per cent on the previous year. In 1870 there were three divorces per 100 marriages in the USA. In 1978 there were 1.13 million divorces which was more than 50 divorces per 100 marriages.

How anyone could suggest that this escalation in divorce rates with all its social implications had no bearing on the fact that divorce was available, or that divorce could lead to a reduction in marital problems, or serve as a foundation for social stability is beyond me. Could anybody facing this issue honestly believe that had divorce not been introduced into England or the USA half of the marriages in these countries would break down, or is it suggested that we in this country have some inherent qualities not given to other peoples which will protect us from the frightening consequences of the divorce scene in other countries? Once divorce is introduced and a number of divorces take place, there is an increased acceptability of it by society and later it becomes the norm and can no longer be controlled.

The figures I have given refute the case made by those favouring divorce who argue that, should divorce be made available, only those who want divorce need be involved. As I have shown, the experience elsewhere is that all marriages are put under strain by divorce and many people who have no desire for divorce are forced into it because the other spouse files for divorce on the grounds of marriage failure. Those who claim that divorce is a civil right might well remember that under no fault divorce, which this Bill proposes to introduce here, a husband can desert his wife and family, set up home elsewhere and after the five year separation envisaged in legislation obtain his divorce, leaving his divorced wife — who did not wish to be divorced because perhaps of religious convictions or a wish to preserve her rights under the law — and his children to live on social assistance. What civil rights have this wife and family in the eyes of those who call divorce a civil right? Do they count for nothing?

Professor Henry Finlay, a leading apologist for the type of divorce now proposed here, gave an honest appraisal of the situation when he said the dilemma of our society was that in relation to this matter you have to be either restrictive or permissive but you cannot be both at the same time. He said that once you start to be permissive you are committed to being increasingly permissive. The process is a cumulative one.

In Northern Ireland, where those who support divorce here would have us believe that divorce legislation is not affecting family life, the number of divorces has risen from 300 in 1970 to 1,655 in 1983, which is more than 18 divorces per 100 marriages. Should this divorce amendment be accepted the legal concept of indissoluble marriage will be abolished and from there onwards all marriages must be defined as dissoluble, and marriage becomes a legal principle, a temporary union. A commitment for life is replaced by a legal commitment to stay with one's spouse until one or other of the partners decides otherwise. It is not simply broken marriages which are affected; all marriages are implicated. The rapidly increasing statistics of divorce experienced worldwide are the inevitable follow-up.

In this Bill it is stated that dissolution of a marriage may take place where a marriage has failed and this would give to the persons concerned the right to remarry. The remaining subsections are merely a palliative to be changed later when the time is ripe. The fact that they will be incorporated in the Constitution can mean little, because, if the constitutional amendment is passed granting permission to separated couples to remarry, we can be assured, if world trends are followed, that in a few years' time the people will be asked to pass a further constitutional amendment changing the remaining sections in the proposed legislation. For example, this Bill contains a provision whereby the marriage failure must continue for a period of at least five years before a dissolution may be granted. This stipulation is more or less on a par with the Divorce Reform Act, 1969, in England. Later, the Matrimonial Causes Act, 1973, provided that no petition of divorce shall be presented within three years of marriage unless the leave of the court has been obtained. In the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act, 1984, that section was repealed and the new section provided that no petition for divorce shall be presented to the court before the expiration of the period of one year from the date of marriage and nothing in this section shall prohibit the presentation of a petition based on matters which occurred before the expiration of that period. There is, therefore, in essence, divorce on demand in England.

There can be little doubt, Constitution or no, that pressure will continue to build up here once divorce is introduced and with the same effects as in England.

There is reference in this Bill to the functions of the court in respect of divorce proceedings. We should remember that when the Divorce Reform Act, 1969, was being enacted in England, those in support of the Bill stressed that the divorce process would remain judicial rather than administrative. In other words, the court should have control over the proceedings rather than making the granting of divorce akin to granting a licence. Within a few years, 1973, to be precise, a special procedure was introduced whereby divorces by consent may, in effect, be obtained by post. There is no need for either spouse to attend court and the judge normally announces decrees of divorce in bulk, rather than assessing each case individually. The reality is that divorce is no longer a judicial process in England. The same situation will apply here eventually if the amendment is passed.

I would like to deal with irretrievable breakdown or, as it is now termed, marriage failure. Far from this type of divorce being restrictive, it is the basis for the most advanced and unrestricted form of divorce available today, a form which has swept through the world in the past ten years and which is sometimes known as no fault divorce. I am referring here to the essence of the type of divorce proposed by the Government in this Bill. The restrictions being imposed will prove to be of a temporary nature as is the case in every country where divorce has been introduced. Under this style of divorce, where a marriage is said to be irretrievably broken down, either spouse will be entitled to divorce without any consideration being given to the conduct of either party. I am not advocating the guilty party concept, far from it, but I could do worse than quote from the observations of Kevin Gray of the University of Cambridge in Reallocation of Property in Divorce:

The English Divorce Reform Act, 1969, effected a radical change in the legal basis of divorce, substituting for the matrimonial offence a concept of irretrievable breakdown. Much of the pressure for reform had dwelt, quite correctly, upon the abuse to which the legal process lent itself and upon the impossibility of applying a criterion of moral guilt as a determining factor in the divorce proceedings. These defects were swept away in the new law, but along with them disappeared the notion of individual responsibility. The idea that matrimonial innocence and blame could no longer serve as satisfactory tests of entitlement of divorce was expressed in statutory language which implies that the concept of responsibility is wholly meaningless in the context of marriage breakdown and is an implication which is by no means justified. The old law had few merits, but it did, at least, recognise substance in the salutary principle of living which treats individuals as ultimately responsible for their actions. The notion of individual responsibility is an intrinsic, albeit inconvenient, feature of the human condition: we would be somewhat less than human and our existence less than purposive, if our decisions and actions were deprived of the dignity of being either right or wrong.

So we would have here a no fault divorce, and we should note that a divorce will be granted not only where both spouses wish it, but, also, in cases where one of the spouses does not wish to be divorced.

If we are to judge by experience in other countries where irretrievable breakdown of marriage is always at the centre of their divorce legislation, the plain facts are that this is not a matter which is investigated by the courts. Where one spouse seeks a divorce, it is in practice presumed to prove the existence of irretrievable breakdown. How could it be otherwise? If a person states that his or her marriage has failed, how can it possibly be proved that it has not? The only effective limitation is where one spouse wants a divorce against the wishes of the other and this simply might result in the waiting period being extended. Of course, the universal trend is for the waiting period to be progressively shorter and that will inevitably apply here whatever the safeguards constitutionally.

The Bill states:

The court may, in accordance with law, grant a dissolution of the marriage provided that the court is satisfied that adequate and proper provision having regard to the circumstances will be made for any dependent spouse and for any child of or any child who is dependent on either spouse.

That sounds very well but, in practice, has been shown to be meaningless elsewhere. Unless the people concerned are reasonably well off, it means little or nothing. The vast majority of families in this country, whether PAYE workers, small farmers or unemployed people, have a relatively low standard of living. What provision can any court make for the deserted spouse and children of a person in such circumstances, who proposes to remarry and raise another family? Indeed, irretrievable breakdown can be engineered by one of the spouses, more than likely the man. He simply moves out of the house and, after the requisite number of years, applies for a divorce. If the purpose of his original desertion of his wife and family is to marry somebody else, then the likelihood is that he has gone to live with her and perhaps has a second family by the time the five years are up. Unless he is relatively well off, how does a court decide as to what adequate and proper provision he can make for his wife and children? Is it not a fact that in the vast majority of cases the State will have to step in and take over the financial responsibilities? He will get his divorce, the taxpayer will foot the bill and in all probability, as is happening in other countries, the former wife and family will be left living on a subsistence allowance. The cost of divorce to the State in Britain is now £1,000 million per year.

Even if a man has a decree for maintenance granted against him, will not that decree become meaningless when the second wife and family appear. The reality is not in the words of the Bill, but in what has happened in other countries where similar divorce laws were implemented. In England, for example, only a tiny percentage of divorced women receive any financial support from their husbands. Indeed, the trend of modern thought in England, as in many other countries which have got divorce laws, is that after a divorce has been granted, both spouses should be regarded as single people, as they were before marriage, and that they should have no responsibility of any kind towards one another.

Men have been pushing this theory even further by stating that they should not have a responsibility towards the children, because the children did not live with them. It is pointless to say there is a subsection in the Bill which states that adequate and proper provision must be made. Such a provision has been inserted in divorce legislation in many countries and it has proved useless. Might I further add that, while supporters of divorce claim that divorce cures bitterness, the English Law Commission, with reference to the bitterness and resentment surrounding the enforcement of financial remedies, points to the fact that in England in 1978, 2,439 men went to prison for wilful refusal and culpable negligence to pay maintenance.

In the Family Home Protection Act, 1976, wives were given substantial protection in respect of the family home. In the event of divorce and remarriage, which wife's rights will be protected in respect of the home? The fact is that the experience in other countries shows that, after divorce takes place, security in the home can no longer be guaranteed in law. In England, for example, the statutory protection for wives against being evicted from the home generally ceases to operate after divorce.

In countries where divorce has been introduced, the succession rights of married women have been substantially reduced. The Succession Act, 1965, seeks to protect the wife's right to occupy the home after the husband's death. Under existing law, a woman has substantial succession rights. Where the husband does not make a will and there are no children, the wife is entitled to all his property and if there are children, she is entitled to two-thirds of his property. A wife is entitled to half the estate where her husband makes a will. As soon as a marriage is dissolved, the divorced wife loses her rights under the Succession Act.

Lord Simon, a former President of the Divorce Division of the English High Court, speaking on the Northern Ireland Divorce Order of 1978, said that he had no doubt that the measure, like the 1969 Divorce Act in England, would be utterly unjust to married women.

Once again, I wish to make the point, as I did in my speech on the report on marital breakdown, that my major concern in this whole matter is for the children. Children are the innocent victims of divorce situations. They have no responsibility for it and they have no say in its outcome. They suffer severe psychological stress as well as economic loss. They cannot cope with divorce.

Before dealing further with this matter, I wish to refer to the paragraph on children in a document circulated I presume, to other Deputies as well as myself, entitled Children & Divorce: Existing Research, by the Divorce Action Group. In this paragraph they refer to research carried out by Hendel in 1960, by West in 1969 and by McCord & McCord in 1969 to support the case they make that where there is conflict in the home, children are better off if parents divorce. The fact is that much more recent research finds that the contrary is true and that divorce is always a disaster for children even where the parents' marriage is unhappy or violent.

There can be little doubt that the Divorce Action Group had got access to all recent research on the subject. What is particularly disturbing is that they chose to ignore it because it did not suit their case, and nothing can better illustrate the weakness of their argument in respect of the seriously adverse effect of divorce on children. The matter we are debating here is of very serious moment and the people of this country are entitled to the full facts of the effects of divorce on children before coming to a decision on the amendment.

The director of the Yale Child Study Centre, Albert Solnit, said that divorce was one of the most serious mental health crises facing children in the eighties.

I am aware that it is sometimes argued that divorce is desirable because it is said that a child will be happier where his parents are divorced rather than living in family discord. This argument equates separation and divorce. While it may happen that because of deep seated disharmony separation may be desirable, it does not follow that divorce is desirable and, indeed, when one notes the economic damage to women and children resulting from divorce, there is good reason to distinguish between separation and divorce. I might add that many divorces have been granted abroad where there is no evidence of continuing matrimonial turmoil.

A recent study in America has shown that less than 10 per cent of the children surveyed experienced relief at the time of separation even though 30 per cent of them witnessed scenes of physical violence between the parents. It was found that though the parents were unhappy, the children were reasonably happy because they did not believe they were any worse off than other families.

Dr. Futterman, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the Child Study Centre of Yale University, has stated that recent studies have challenged the earlier belief among professionals that divorce is better for children than living with unhappy marriages and a study by Wallerstein & Kelly demonstrates that children actually prefer an unhappy marriage to their parents' divorce.

Michael Freeman of University College, London, 1981, notes that Wallerstein and Kelly 1980 found, so far as pre-adolescent children are concerned that divorce was a bolt of lightning that struck them when they were not even aware of the existence of a storm and that at the time the parents separate, the child is intensely worried about what is going to happen to him. Whatever its shortcomings, the family is perceived by the child as having provided the support and protection he needs. To him the divorce signifies the collapse of that structure and he feels alone and very frightened.

At a time of divorce children and adolescents experience a heightened sense of their own vulnerability. They suffer depression, sleeplessness, restlessness and difficulty in concentration. The loneliness of the child is very deep and very painful and it is frequently wedded to a sense of rejection and a yearning for the intact family. The child's loyalty is strained and pulled in both directions towards each individual parent.

Children of divorced parents suffer from a feeling of deep insecurity. They feel that, having been abandoned by one parent, the other parent will also abandon them. They feel the need to be near that parent and often no longer want to go to school or to go out to play in case the remaining parent will have gone away when they come home. Children of all ages can suffer as a result of divorce. Many independent studies show the recurring picture of children suffering guilt, fear, loneliness and anger and point to the very important effects of parental conduct on children. If one were to ignore this dimension and concentrate solely on the relationship of parents to one another, serious damage can be caused to children. Clearly from the child's point of view divorce is certainly not the solution for unhappy marriages.

The deep seated detrimental effect of divorce on children can last a lifetime. Even where divorces were co-operative ones, without acrimony, Dr. Edward Futterman of Yale University Child Study Centre 1980 found that children from such apparently benign marriage dissolutions may come to the child psychiatrist long after the actual divorce with many psychological problems. There are often, too, problems experienced by the child with step parents. Families in these circumstances are often beset with jealousies and conflicts of loyalty not found in traditional families. Children sometimes cannot adapt to the new family.

This Bill claims that the rights of maintenance of children will be protected in law. The evidence from countries with a system of divorce similar to that proposed in the Bill is that the interest of children is largely ignored, even though apparently catered for in legislation. When the Divorce Reform Act, 1969, was being enacted, those favouring the legislation gave assurances that the interests of the children would be protected in divorce proceedings. It was stated that a divorce decree would not be granted unless the court was satisfied that the arrangements made for the children were satisfactory or the best that could be devised in the circumstances. Note the similarity in the wording of the Bill before the House. Experience has again shown that in nine cases out of ten the courts do not even adjourn proceedings for further information regarding the child's welfare where the parents are agreed on the custody of the children. There is, in fact, no concern for the future lives of the children.

In a report published in April 1981 entitled Maintenance: Putting Children First, the National Council of One Parent Families, referring to the maintenance of children after divorce in England, state that dependent children are involved in over 60 per cent of the divorces and that there are very strong indications that very little maintenance is paid to the vast majority of one parent families that are a consequence of divorce and that 61 per cent of one parent families headed by women are dependent on State benefits as their main source of income.

In America, Professors Sabilas and Ayers, 1977, state that often the interests of children is the least considered area in the American way of divorce. So far as children are concerned, clearly divorce is not the answer. Little attention is paid in divorce cases to the interests of children even though their rights are laid down in legislation. In no country in the world is divorce granted in the interests of children.

If I am to judge by literature and statements from those supporting divorce, the motivation appears to be compassion for persons locked in intolerable marriage situations suffering mental, emotional and physical cruelty from their spouses or deserted by their spouses. Such persons deserve sincere sympathy and compassion and the State must gear itself to help them to a much greater degree than heretofore. There are, however, persons other than the marriage partners affected by divorce. These, also, deserve sympathy and compassion. As I have already said, none is more deeply affected by divorce than children. Marriages may cease, but parenthood is for ever.

The report of an ecumenical working party on the effects of divorce on children set up in 1980 by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, which reported in 1983, bears out all I have said on the tragedy of children caught in divorce situations. In an appendix to the report is the following, and I quote:

Divorce is always a disaster for children. This is true, even if their parents' marriage was stormy, unhappy or violent, or any combination of these. It is true, also, of civilised divorces. Divorce must be seen as one of the hazards of childhood.

There are about one million children in Great Britain at present who have divorced parents. It is estimated that 1.6 million children there will have divorced parents by the end of the century. Nothing could more vividly display the escalator effect of divorce.

As I said here on a previous occasion, between 1950 and 1980 the divorce rate in the United States of America doubled. Since 1972 an additional one million children have been affected there by their parents' divorce. It is estimated that 45 per cent of the children growing up in the United States will see the separation or divorce of their parents.

Dr. Michael Rutley, Department of Child Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Denmark Hill, London, states:

Sometimes there is a tendency to view divorce as if it were a positive solution to destructive family functioning. For the child, according to this view, the resolution of the family conflict should be generally beneficial, with the loss of one parent from the household as the only likely stressor in the situation. Recent research, especially that by Hetherington (1978, 1979), by Wallerstein & Kelly (1980), and by Hess & Camera (1979) has clearly shown that these assumptions are wrong. The assumption that divorce necessarily brings conflict to an end is mistaken and it is certainly not the case that the absence of one parent is the only potential stressor for the child. In the immediate aftermath of divorce, both parents tend to be inconsistent, less affectionate and lacking in control over their children. The mothers become depressed, self-involved, erratic, less supportive and ineffectually authoritarian with their children. Fathers often begin by being unduly indulgent and permissive but then increase in restrictiveness and in the use of negative sanctions. The post-divorce family relationship between parents and between each parent and the child play a major role in determining the consequences of divorce for the children.

One thing is certain. The clean break that many parents hope a divorce will bring is a fantasy, at least as far as children are concerned. For them, there is always some carry-over from the past. It can be a case that adults improve their situation at the expense of children.

Can we as a caring community make a decision which will place the future of Irish children in such jeopardy?

The argument is being put forward that religious conviction in Ireland would be strong enough to withstand the introduction of divorce and that a small minority only would avail of it. If one is to go by experience elsewhere, this expectation can hardly be said to be justified. In countries where divorce is extant, divorce built up a social pressure which became stronger than moral or religious resistance. The sharp increase in the divorce rate in Northern Ireland since 1979, when that area was brought into line with English legislation, supports the point made. In Northern Ireland the rate of divorce was one in every 40 marriages in 1970. In 1975, a mere five years later, the rate had risen significantly to one divorce in every 25 marriages. In 1983, it had leaped to one divorce in every six marriages. These statistics have a frightening message for us, and the only conclusion one can draw from them is that the more readily available divorce becomes, the more frequently it is sought.

In a report entitled Demographic Trends in Northern Ireland, published by the Economic Council there, it is stated that in 1984 divorced men remarry four times more often than divorced women. These figures further highlight the position women find themselves in when divorced and support my argument that women are badly affected by divorce, being left, as a rule, to look after the family, often on a subsistence income, while the man sets up home elsewhere. We should remember that that is happening in a part of Ireland.

Marriage and the family are under great pressure at present. Marital breakdown is a growing problem in this country. From what I have said today and on previous occasions on the subject, it is clear that divorce is not the remedy and that, indeed, the cure would be worse that the disease. If we are to fulfil the constitutional pledge which I have quoted, we must rather concentrate on the many and varied factors which give rise to tensions within marriage and on the necessary supports for marriage, so as to alleviate and, where possible, eliminate these factors. I believe that the subsection for the Constitution which I have quoted makes it incumbent on the State to play a major role in aiding those with marital problems so as to improve their position in the short term by gearing our social and legal systems to a much greater degree toward support for marriage and the family and through developing counselling facilities for persons proposing to marry and for those already married. With regard to married couples, a system must be developed where problems can be identified quickly and dealt with before they become intractable.

The need for the development of counselling services at the pre-marriage stage is urgent. As I mentioned in a speech here on the report on marital breakdown, the Churches have given considerable attention to this matter in recent years with worthwhile results. However, the Churches have limited resources and, as the stability of marriage and the family is the cornerstone to the stability of the State, it is incumbent on the State to recognise its responsibilities in this area and to make adequate finances available to ensure that the best possible services are available to those in need and that every means will be utilised to publicise these services. As I mentioned already, the Churches have voluntary advisory bodies which have got a high level of professionalism but which need money to develop their facilities so as to provide easily accessible and effective counselling services. The State should recognise these voluntary bodies, finance them and co-operate with them so that they can effectively carry out their duties. I do not feel, however, that the State should be directly involved in this work where a delicate and particularly caring approach is needed.

My experience of the personnel involved in Church advisory councils is that they are well trained and very professional. This is a vitally important aspect. Poorly trained personnel would wreak havoc on an unstable marriage. The return to the State for this type of expenditure is exceptional and, of course, the impact on the married couples involved is incalculable.

A relatively mature approach and proper training go a long way to guarantee that a person will perform well with the job in hand. It is regrettably only too true that for the most important vocation in the lives of the vast majority of people, that is to say, marriage, maturity does not appear to matter and there is little or no training whatsoever. Young people meet, fall in love and get married and that appears to be that. There is no more serious decision in the lives of young people, bearing in mind its responsibilities and consequences, than the decision to marry and yet few contracts are more easily entered into. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that young people should be as mature as possible before entering into marriage so that they can fully appreciate its implications and be prepared to undertake its responsibilities and, therefore, while welcoming the decision to raise the minimum age for marriage to 18 years, I, personally, would like to see it raised somewhat higher.

The age at which two people marry is closely associated with the likelihood of marriage breakdown. Experience in Britain shows that the figures for marriage breakdown generally decline the older the spouses are when they marry and that those who marry in their teens are twice as likely to experience marriage breakdown as those who marry between 20 and 24 years of age. If the 1980-81 divorce rates in Britain were to continue, almost three out of every five teenage bachelor grooms and one in two teenage spinster brides would eventually divorce. These figures show how susceptible to marriage breakdown teenage people are and the need for particular care in deciding on the minimum age for marriage.

I cannot sufficiently emphasise the importance of education in the preparation for marriage. I am not now referring simply to pre-marriage or post-marriage counselling, but to the gearing and restructuring of our education system towards the development of the whole person as an individual human being, and in relationships with fellow human beings.

Our education system, however well it may ensure academic and technical achievements, will have failed if young people are not taught to respect their fellows. I believe that a properly structured development of our educational system would transform the scene in years to come.

We are told by Government sources that efforts will be made to deal with problems so as to avert a breakdown in marriage, and that a whole variety of counselling services will be made available.

Experience in other countries and, indeed, our knowledge of human nature, teach us that divorce, once introduced, will become an end in itself. The Government will reckon, having given the opportunity to married couples to opt out and to marry again and having made provision mainly through the social welfare services for the other spouse and dependants, that they will have done their duty and will no more concern themselves here than the Government in Britain does about reconciliation and retrieving a failed marriage.

We have people being interviewed by the media all over the country stating that they fully support divorce, sadly without concerning themselves about the consequences. It might be helpful to remind them that should a divorce situation hit somebody in their own family circle, their attitude might quickly change. I spoke to people who experienced such a situation in America and they told me that the grief and anguish this causes to most members of a family are indescribable. The worry of a father and a mother when a son's or daughter's marriage fails and goes to the divorce court is pitiable. The court must know the facts, all of the facts and the cloud hanging over the whole family during the divorce proceedings and after is sad indeed. In Britain and America the sword hangs over every family and even when people rejoice at a wedding, the clergyman or registrar and particularly the older people present cannot help wondering at the back of their minds whether next year, or five years hence, will see the loving and happy couples parted in divorce. The chances of survival in both these countries is only about fifty-fifty.

It is therefore important that in particular young people before casting their votes should ask themselves if what they are doing is opening the door to problems in the divorce courts, maybe for themselves, maybe for their brothers and sisters, maybe indeed, for their own children, and then ask themselves if, when such a day comes, they will be happy that they had, through their votes, precipitated such a family crisis. Of one thing they can be assured, should divorce be introduced through the referendum, there can be no turning back.

We all know troubled couples whose marriages are in difficulty. We have compassion for them and are saddened to see them tied in an impossible situation. If we legalise divorce, some of these troubled people may be helped. That is the short term view. The long term view, however, in view of what I have said in the course of my speech, must be that there should be no legal divorce.

The Government committee on marital breakdown stated that the great majority of our marriages are stable and viable. The marriage scene in divorce countries, as I have shown, gets worse by the year. In such countries, the phrase "the breakdown of the home" has become a terrible reality with an army of psychiatrists and lawyers trying to make sense of the lives of countless young people, often living with one of the divorced parents who is perhaps married with a new family, and unable to relate to one another.

The real answer to the troubled couples I referred to is help them in their marriages in every possible way and, if possible, to help them rebuild their relationship or where that is impossible to ensure through judicial or legal separation that having separated, they are properly provided for. Finance must be made available by the Government so that judicial or legal separation will be made easily accessible to people who need these procedures. The price of divorce is a rapid increase in the number of broken homes and a miserable marriage scene stretching out before us.

From the points that I have made during the course of my speech, it is clear that women and children are the ones who will suffer if the constitutional amendment is passed and I would ask all our people to make themselves fully informed on the matter before casting their votes.

I shall now summarise what I have said, regarding women, children and divorce.

The law in Ireland at present allows a husband and wife, whose marriage has broken down to separate and, through judicial separations, legal separation or civil nullity, provision can be made for the wife and children, and problems such as maintenance, succession, family home, custody of children, etc. resolved.

It is vitally important that people should be fully informed about judicial and legal separation and it is the duty of the Government to let our people know what their rights are under our separation laws, and to make the necessary finance available to improve on these laws and to make them more accessible to people who need them.

In the amendment, therefore, we are concerned only with granting the right to remarry. Laws giving the right to separate are already there.

If the amendment is passed, one of the spouses can demand and get a divorce, on the grounds of the failure of the marriage whether the other spouse wishes it or not.

Once the divorce takes place the wife is no longer a dependant. The Succession Act seeks to protect the wife's right to occupy the home after the husband's death.

Under the Succession Act 1965, if a husband fails to make a will, the wife is entitled to all of his property if there are no children, and two-thirds of his property if there are children.

If her husband makes a will, she is entitled in law to half of his property whether he likes it or not. After divorce these rights are lost to the wife.

Under the Family Home Protection Act, 1976, wives were given substantial protection in respect of the family home. Experience in other countries shows that, after divorce takes place, security in the home can no longer be guaranteed by law. In England, the statutory protection for wives against being evicted from the home generally ceases to operate after divorce.

After the husband's death where divorce has been involved, the second wife will be entitled to the widow's pension, while the first wife in many instances will exist on social assistance.

The amendment states that the court must be satisfied that adequate and proper provision, having regard to the circumstances, will be made for any dependent spouse and children.

The vast majority of families in this country, whether PAYE, small farmers, or unemployed people, have grave difficulty in living on their incomes. In most cases there will be no extra money to provide for the first wife and family when the second marriage takes place. In such circumstances, the court can grant only social assistance to the first wife and family, who will then be forced to exist on it.

In England, where the same conditions obtain in their divorce laws, only a tiny percentage of divorced women receive any financial support from their husbands. In England 61 per cent of one parent families headed by women are dependent on State benefits as their main source of income.

If divorce is added to our Constitution, the second marriage will have all the rights prescribed under the Constitution and all the supports that were there for the first family will then pass to the second family.

If, for example, the court allocates a part of the husband's income to his first wife, because the Constitution declares that the family rights are antecedent and superior to all positive law and as this now applies to the second family, the second wife can have a constitutional right to contest the right of the first wife to the allowance and with the full force of the Constitution behind her claim.

In countries where divorce is available, it is now becoming the practice to put a time limit to the period in which provision must be made for the former wife.

In the appendix to a report of an ecumenical working party on the effects of divorce, set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury in England and reporting in 1983, is the following:

Divorce is always a disaster for children. This is true even if their parents' marriage was stormy, violent, or any combination of these. Divorce must be seen as one of the hazards of childhood.

The director of the Yale Child Study Centre in America, Albert Solnit, said that divorce is one of the most serious health crises facing children in the eighties.

Dr. Wallerstein and Dr. Kelly, in their study of children and divorce, found so far as pre-adolescent children are concerned that divorce was a bolt of lightning that struck them when they were not even aware of the existence of a storm and that at the time the parents separate the child is intensely worried about what is going to happen to him.

At the time of divorce, studies tell us, children and adolescents suffer depression, sleeplessness, restlessness and difficulty in concentration. The loneliness of the child is very deep and very painful.

The deep-seated effect of divorce on children can last a life time. Dr. Edward Futterman of Yale University found that children from divorces, which were co-operative ones without acrimony, may come to the child psychiatrist long after the actual divorce with many psychological problems.

Dr. Futterman, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Paediatrics at the Child Study Centre of Yale University, states that recent studies have challenged the earlier belief among professionals that divorce is better than living with unhappy marriages.

Wallerstein and Kelly demonstrate that children actually prefer an unhappy marriage to their parents' divorce.

The Bill claims that the rights of maintenance of children will be protected in law. The evidence from countries which have divorce is that the interests of children are largely ignored, even though catered for in legislation.

In a report published in April 1981 entitled Maintenance — Putting Children First, the National Council of One Parent Families, referring to the maintenance of children after divorce in England, state that dependent children are involved in over 60 per cent of the divorces and that there are very strong indications that very little maintenance is paid to the vast majority of one parent families.

In America, Professors Sabilas and Ayers state that often the interests of children is the least considered area in divorce.

Experience from other countries points to the fact that provision for the wife and family in divorce cases is catered for largely by social welfare payments. It is estimated that divorce costs the British public £1,000 million a year.

In Northern Ireland the rate of divorce in 1970 was one divorce in every 40 marriages. By 1975, it was one divorce in every 25 marriages and in 1983 it was one divorce in every six marriages. In Northern Ireland divorced men remarry four times more often than divorced women. Women, in most instances, are left to look after the family, often on subsistence allowance, while the men set up another home. Remember that this is happening in a part of Ireland.

Experience in other countries shows a rapid increase in the rate of divorce. In 1978, the number of divorced in England jumped to 143,667 or 39 divorces in every 100 marriages. In 1983, the number had risen to 40 divorces in every 100 marriages. The number of marriages filed for divorce in 1984 was up by 6 per cent on 1983. In 1978, there were 1.13 million divorces in the USA which was more than 50 divorces in every 100 marriages. If divorce is introduced here, the same pattern will follow.

The figures I have given refute the case made by those favouring divorce who argue that, should divorce be made available, only those who want divorce need be involved. As I have shown, the experience elsewhere is that all marriages are put under strain by no fault divorce, and many people who have no desire for divorce are forced into it because the other spouse files for divorce on the grounds of marriage failure. I might add that second marriages after divorce have themselves been found to show a high rate of breakdown. The only conclusion one can draw from these figures is that the more readily available divorce is, the more frequently it is sought.

The referendum Bill states that a marriage must have failed for five years before a divorce can be granted, and this is claimed to be a safeguard. The Divorce Reform Act, 1969, had much the same provision in England. The Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act, 1984, reduced the period to one year. Once the divorce provision is accepted here, the period of waiting will follow the same pattern.

I might add that conditions introduced into the Constitution by this referendum will make little difference. If divorce can be introduced by a referendum, pressure will build up to hold a referendum to change these conditions.

There is no reference to separation in the Bill. The five year separation period required before the application for divorce will be entertained will be legislated for in the Dáil and Seanad if the referendum is passed.

This Government or any future Government can through legislation reduce the separation period to three years or one year, or abolish it altogether. It is not correct to say that the people must be consulted again by referendum to have the separation period reduced.

In all these circumstances, where the wife and children fare so badly in divorce situations and where so much irreparable damage is caused to the whole fabric of society, I strongly appeal to the people of Ireland to reject the amendment to the Constitution.

I welcome the proposal to amend the constitution to allow divorce and remarriage in certain specified and restricted circumstances. I am happy and proud to be part of the Government who have produced what I believe to be a balanced and just proposal for change in our laws and in our society. I have listened most of the morning to the contributions from those with differing views. I would like to say that it is because I care for families, women and children that I support the making of changes which will allow people the opportunity of divorce and remarriage.

I accept the views which we have heard against making any change as being sincere and deeply held. Wherever people have proposed major social change — and I accept that this is a major social change — in the past there have always been these fears of huge social instability. When slavery was being abolished there was a suggestion that it would upset the whole social order of American society, which would not be able to function as it normally would. It did not function as it did previously, but it functioned in a much better fashion. Seventy per cent of the applicants for divorce are women. The number of women and children involved in marriage breakdown are being used as an argument against the granting of the opportunity of remarriage. I find this absolutely extraordinary. It leads to the strange situation in that the people who are opposed to change presumably speak for the benefit of women and children. I, in seeking this change, feel that I am speaking from that position.

Deputy Woods' contribution was a very articulate critic of the proposals. His position is very difficult to understand. Unlike other speakers, such as Deputy Glenn, whose position I respect substantially and know to be deeply held and to be carried all the way, I find his position stops so short of taking any position as to be undermined in its whole presentation. I wish to make those remarks before going on to explain why this Bill should be passed.

Deputy Woods in his contribution suggested that valid and constitutional marriages would be wiped out as a result of this change. It is proposed under this legislation that only those whose marriages have failed for five years or two years after a legal separation — the ultimate maximum which the law currently allows and which in many cases means people have voluntarily given up succession rights — will be able to apply for divorce?

Deputy Faulkner suggested that problems would arise because of divorce. The only reason we are addressing this problem is that there are tens of thousands of men, women and children involved in marital breakdown and in remarriage. We are not trying to create a problem. We are dealing with a real social problem which all of us know in our families and all of us can, if we wish, turn our backs on. I will not be part of a country and a society that will continue to turn our backs on these real social problems which leave people living in very unhappy situations of human misery and in a legal limbo.

Deputy Woods referred to the constitutional orphans. There are many legal and constitutional orphans blessed in marriage by the Church who have also made their contribution in relation to the family. They have something to answer in relation to the legal position of families. They have given blessings to second marriages which effectively leave children legal orphans. It is a new marriage in the eyes of the State and a first marriage in the eyes of the Church. They have developed a very complex set of responses to marriage breakdown. They oppose our genuine attempts to deal with the same problem in a legislative fashion in an area for which we have direct responsibility. There are questions to be answered.

Everybody knows that the Church is ahead of us in acknowledging the problems of marriage breakdown, in annulling marriages where there are children and in allowing second marriages. That is one of the reasons we have such a complicated situation which must be dealt with before we have generations of children who are completely without legal rights of any sort and where we have ludicrous situations of intestacy. For example, when a man dies who has been living with his second wife and children, blessed by the Church, his estate will go to somebody who he has not lived with for ten, 15 or 20 years and who may be living with somebody else and may be well cared for. This is ludicrous and we cannot as legislators continue to turn our backs on it. It is a serious social and legal problem which we need to redress. This Bill goes a long way towards doing that in a moderate and reasonable fashion. There is no question but that this is a hard issue to deal with, an issue of marriage breakdown which inevitably involves suffering. We are trying to ensure where possible that certain avenues will be open to people to reorganise their lives and to try again. I support that attempt.

While Deputy Woods made criticisms of the Bill, he stopped short of suggesting that it should be opposed. If he is supporting the Bill the points which he mentioned can be taken on board. There are two things he could make clear. He could criticise the Bill in its detail. It is important that having gone so far he should, as a representative of his party, either go the whole way and say he opposes legislation of this kind or suggest that the question in principle is one which should be supported. Deputy Kelly said it is fence sitting and a double-faced approach to a very serious problem. I find this very frustrating. It is a totally inadequate response to something which is very serious.

The Bill is of a restrictive nature. I hope that the questions raised by people about the interpretation of the Bill can be dealt with on Committee Stage and that any reasonable amendments will be taken on board. The stated and declared intention of the Government to produce a restrictive form of divorce should receive public support. Together with many people with a direct interest in this, I became very impatient at times during the lead up to this legislation. We questioned whether the Taoiseach and the Government as a whole would have the commitment and the courage to deal with this very controversial social issue. I admit now that the process has been a vindication of the Taoiseach's understanding of the problem and of the need to approach it in a steady, slow fashion. The long process of discussion of the marital breakdown committee led to a consensus which has entirely disappeared in the debate.

The consultations with the Churches were valuable and the Bill has benefited from them. The proposals are restrictive and moderate and, therefore, are in keeping with traditional attitudes to marriage in Ireland. I support marriage and I support the family. It is for this reason that I take this position. I resent the suggestion by some of the people who are against any change that, because people have a different view, they belong to a liberal anti-family wing. I would like to think that I am liberal but I would totally reject any suggestion that to take this position is anti-family.

The opinion polls published since the publication of the Government's Bill suggest that the Government have got it right and have managed to produce a Bill which responds to the many cases of human misery and which protects marriage as we know it. There is a conflict in Irish society. People wish to do the two things but find it difficult to add them together. The proposal before us does that in a substantial fashion. It has achieved the correct balance because it is a restrictive proposal. The mention of five years plus the two years post-separation procedure mean that, before anybody can start divorce proceedings, they must have exhausted all the other legal remedies. Since 1867 we have allowed people to separate, to divide custody of their children, to divide matrimonial property and to have divorces that are divorce in all but the final letter of the law. Yet we are suggesting that this is somehow going to create a problem. All we are stopping short of doing is allowing people to remarry. I do not think we can support that any longer.

I welcome the fact that there are extra protections in family law for women and children as a result of the Government's proposals. It is proposed that there will be a new recognition of the role of women in the home when assessing separation proceedings. That is to be welcomed. It is important to point out that they must have exhausted all legal remedies available to them. Therefore, there can be no accepting the argument that this is somehow making things easier for people whose marriages are breaking down. It is a further legal stage they have to go through. The fact that the proposal is built into the Constitution is a security for people who wish to move very slowly on this, more slowly than I would like. As a politician you must try to find the correct balance, particularly on an issue as important as this. It is important to achieve some measure of reform.

Listening to some people here it strikes me that we could all be from different worlds. We certainly have different visions of the future. My vision of the future is one which allows us to respond to human problems and to take risks. We can achieve stability in our society and deal with the problem of traditional attitudes to marriage in legislation such as this.

When I became involved in politics in the late seventies one of the things that frustrated me was that certain things dominated politics and consequently social injustices were buried and ignored. There is still that atmosphere in the opposition to this Bill. The tendency is there not to deal with it or to pretend it is not there. It is more convenient to do that and that is an unhappy approach which I could not share. We can see a generation of children without legal rights and they will not thank us for clinging on to a hollow image of a family. Many of the children of Ireland are living in marriages that are not recognised by the State. We are excluding them entirely.

In the late seventies the present Taoiseach was riding high in the opinion polls. That was so because of his expressed commitment to change our society and to face up to some of the issues now before us. This is something he had been identified with and during his period he has carried the people with him. I am convinced that, in delivering on this issue and in giving the people an opportunity to decide, he has proposed a piece of legislation that is broadly acceptable to the people. He is striking the right balance as a political leader which was sadly missing since the last referendum, which seemed to paralyse people's courage to deal with social issues. It certainly paralysed the will of politicians, and I admit to being part of that paralysis. I am glad to see that at last we are attempting to deal with these matters in a courageous and honest way.

We are right to face this issue for many reasons. We must allow rights to men and women, but especially to children because the experience of many children has been of sadness, disappointment, violence and trauma in marriages. They are being given a chance. Wives of unhappy marriages are being given a chance to try again if they are lucky to find somebody with whom they wish to try again. I cannot accept that a society should say to a young woman in her twenties with a child or two who has been battered and bruised mentally and physically that she cannot try to build a real marriage in a loving environment for herself and her children with somebody else. That is the heart of the issue.

People who oppose this legislation respond by simply saying that to deal with these social problems would destabilise marriage further. That is an "I am all right" mentality which is neither Christian nor reasonable. The problem will not disappear by ignoring it. This legislation will give people a choice.

It is unChristian to preach that human beings should be condemned for life in the prison of unhappy marriages. This morning I heard some extraordinary suggestions, some twisting of research to fit an end. I understood Deputy Faulkner to have said that certain research showed the effects of divorce on children. He could have put the effect of separation on children in place of divorce because we have many cases of separation and breakdown. The traumatic effects which he described in relation to divorce are already being felt by thousands of Irish children and families. He suggested research indicated that children are better in families even where the wife is being beaten by the father. Was the Deputy putting that forward as an acceptable ideal for a family? That is an extraordinary suggestion. What it suggests in regard to the worth of women is unthinkable and entirely unacceptable. He is not the first to make such a suggestion.

The Joint Committee on Marriage Breakdown assessed the submission of Fr. Jack Dominian who suggested that the concept of marriage is changing and as a consequence, perhaps, more marriages are breaking down. The concept has not changed negatively. People have a higher expectation of marriage, not an institution in which there is a role of subservience for the woman but a shared partnership in a new challenging relationship. That is the kind of marriage that I would wish to protect. If, God help us, a child has known nothing but violence during his or her growing up years, that is not a reason to accept that kind of marriage and those conditions as natural. To twist that kind of argument into opposition to changing the law is unChristian. The sooner such a situation is rectified the better for the children of such marriages. It would also be better for the man and woman.

I regard it as my duty to support this proposed change, and I ask those who oppose it to examine their consciences when they turn their backs on situations of great suffering all around us. Such suffering is the more painful because it occurs in families in which there should be love and support. Marriage has not provided that for many people in Ireland without divorce.

I should like to refer to some cases known personally to me. They make me more convinced every day that we need to deal urgently with the problem. A young woman has been separated for five years. He left her at age 26 years with two children, the youngest being one year at the time. The marriage had been one of beatings and bad debts. In the intervening years she has ensured the security of the family home. She often works at two jobs and has purchased out the husband's interest in the home, having first paid his debts and re-negotiated a loan. In the interim he has had two different relationships and has been living in various parts of Ireland and abroad. She has taken the children for psychological assessment. Her problems were not caused by divorce and will not be solved by divorce. However, she has now established a new relationship with someone who is kind and loving to her children, takes them to football matches and plays games with them. Has she not earned her chance to try again if all involved wish to do so? As a society do we not owe her and her children the opportunity to try again in a stable and loving environment?

The second case I refer to again involves violence. The girl, aged 29 years, is now beginning to accept that she must be separated from her husband. She has one child aged about six years. The violence in that marriage was associated with unemployment but also with a family acceptance of the history of violence in the husband's family, in which violence was common. What brought the wife to the realisation that she must separate was a violent beating in which she lost the child she was carrying at the time. This prompted her to begin to go through the terrible trauma of breaking up the home she loved and that he loved, but the tragedy of their relationship was such that they could no longer live together. My greatest sympathy is for the six-year old child who witnessed all of this. Great violence has been done to that child. I should like that woman to have a chance in the future to meet somebody else so that her son will have a different model as father — and a different model as a family. That is the constitutional right of a child.

Today we have discussed only the family as outlined in the Irish Constitution, but there is also the question of individual rights. Deputy Woods indicated the dreadful problems that could occur if we accepted the new family and gave all the constitutional rights to that unit. I gather from the legal advisers around that that problem may not arise because our courts have interpreted the definition of family to be one based on marriage. Therefore, the first family would be equally protected. It is sad that this argument has been used as a threat against women to defeat the proposal. I agree that questions should be asked and matters should be sorted out, but if there is no substance to the questions they should not be raised constantly in an attempt to scare people from supporting the proposal.

The third case concerns a more mature woman in her late thirties. She has three children but has finally left her husband after 12 years of marriage, of unpaid bills and of begging for enough money to feed and clothe the children. She was not subjected to violence but debt collectors regularly called to the door and she never knew a moment's peace. She had no home but lived with her in-laws. Finally, for the sake of her sanity and for the security of her children, separation and independence were preferable to "marriage" to someone who continued to act entirely as though he was single with no responsibilities.

The most consistent factor in all the cases has been that none of the people involved reached the decision to separate without years of trying to make their marriage work. It is significant that in the majority of cases it has been the woman who has taken the initiative. The argument put forward here by people against the proposal is that it is anti-woman, but I do not agree with that. This morning Deputy Glenn referred to "discarded" women; but it is the case, and statistics bear this out, that it is often the man who is thrown aside and who is left without family and home. The argument is being used as a convenient stick to beat this proposal but in my experience it has not been substantiated. In fact, where divorce has been available, some 70 per cent of the applicants are women.

As well as being unChristian. I do not think it is sensible to suggest that people will lightly seek divorce. I have outlined the kind of torment most people go through before they decide finally to take action. I agree entirely with the view expressed here that divorce is not a happy thing. It is not a solution to marriage breakdown and nobody suggested it was. It is the opportunity to allow people whose marriages have broken down to try again. We must not forget that we have marriage breakdown and separation here already and a high price is paid, both socially and economically.

Even in a seemingly divorce crazy society such as America, at last there is some evidence of stabilisation. Divorce has been available for decades in Northern Ireland, but the rate has been comparatively low and it is also low in Catholic Italy. It would be low here because we have a society who have certain strong values that would not change overnight. Other changes that were expected to create a huge social upheaval have not led to massive change here. Since 1867 it has been possible here to get a legal separation. Our laws allow couples to divide up the matrimonial property, to agree on the custody of children and to cease to be married in all but the letter of the law. It has been divorce in all aspects other than the right to remarry.

Much play has been made about the adverse effects on women who are "discarded". Most of the cost is already taken up by the State. The problem is with us; it is not about to come if our laws allow for divorce. Marriages are breaking up. Women are being deserted and are not being supported except by the State. The legal costs have already been met by the State. As things stand today, all stages of the preliminary process are being gone through for increasing numbers of people each year and to argue that we will have to pay suddenly the social cost is not an honest assessment. Deputy Glenn this morning mentioned the figure of £200 million. She got that up by using the figure she has always argued against, namely, 70,000 and by assuming that 35,000 of them will be in receipt of the deserted wife's allowance. Many of that 70,000 will already be receiving deserted wife's benefit, will be on supplementary assistance and will be in receipt of separate payments from their husbands. The point is that already the State is paying a quite considerable amount.

The Bill provides for another legal hurdle that must be crossed but at least it offers the people concerned a chance to start again with the blessing of the State. For a sizeable number, the Church will already have offered them an annulment. For others who have gone ahead and formed new relationships — and there are many such people — with or without the blessing of the Church, it will offer the opportunity to bind their children and themselves into a lawful second marriage. I hope we can devise a Bill that will allow them to do this, not in an easy fashion but as outlined in the intent of the Government's legislation and statement. The Irish people are caring and compassionate. If we can assure them that our proposals are sound, I am confident they will feel secure enough to consider those who have marriage problems while maintaining the traditional approach to marriage and the family. I hope the debate in this House will help to reassure the people that this is the right proposal.

On 13 December 1985, I spoke here on the report issued by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Marriage Breakdown. I said what I had to say there. We have had enough talk about this aspect of Irish life. That committee discussed it and the Law Reform Commission have issued reports about nullity. Various politicians have spoken about it during the past ten years. We have had debates and action groups, as well as anti-divorce and pro-divorce campaigns. The time has come to make a decision. Speaking in this House on 13 December 1985 I said I was in favour of divorce legislation and that I was convinced a referendum should be held as soon as possible with a view to removing that provision of the Constitution which prohibits divorce. My view today is identical.

The bringing of this Bill before the House is a historic event. Politicians seem to get apoplexy when there are moral or social issues to be taken on. We wait until the mob have moved safely in front before we decide to lead them, rather than initiating debate. We have grown up as a political society and as a society generally during the past ten years. I remember the furore in the mid-seventies about the contraception debate. I have noticed that politicians who made speeches against the legislation on contraception have changed their views not only on that matter but on other social issues. It is a sign of our maturing as a society. Political parties and politicians have grown up somewhat in the past ten years and even in the past year. I accept that there are opposing views on all sides in this House and within all parties. There are differences in Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Party and in the other two parties in this House. No party has a monopoly on sincerity and wisdom in this regard; neither has any politician.

It is somewhat historic that the Fianna Fáil Party have decided not to adopt a party position on this matter or to apply the Whip. Instead we will leave it to the people to decide. I welcome this as a member of Fianna Fáil and as someone who has had difficulties with them through the years on matters such as this. I expect that more than half of the Fianna Fáil Parliamentary party will vote against the proposed change in the Constitution when the matter is put to the people, but a sizeable proportion within the party will vote for it. I will certainly be voting for the Bill. Fianna Fáil have adopted a mature and responsible position. People on this side can speak as they wish and advocate that people vote for or against this proposal. I listened very carefully to what Deputy Faulkner had to say and he is entitled to his opinion. I was not here when Deputy Woods was speaking but the view he put forward was his own. The Fianna Fáil view is that it is up to each individual Deputy to decide. That is our position going into this referendum campaign. I am glad of that allowance for people such as myself who want to speak in favour of this amendment.

I compliment the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Marriage Breakdown who produced an excellent report and got the issue off the ground. In particular I compliment Deputy Michael O'Leary who put the cat among the pigeons during the past six months. A lot of credit must be given to him in that he finally stirred the politicians into action. We seem to have a tendency in all walks of life to ignore a problem in the hope that it will go away. It is a bit like the ostrich putting its head into the sand. Politicians and people in responsible positions do not like to grasp any political nettle which might cost votes. I accept the sincerity of Deputies who have spoken in opposition to this Bill but the impression would seem to be that everything in the Irish garden is rosy so far as marriage is concerned. That is not the case. There is hardly a person in any family in any part of Ireland who does not have a brother, a sister or a close relative involved in the problem of marital breakdown. There seems to be an attitude that these problems do not exist or, if they do, we do not want to hear about them. Such problems really do exist and we must face up to them.

I am in favour of the Government's proposal, which I believe to be very reasonable. I do not intend to campaign in the referendum but I will certainly cast my vote in favour on the day of the referendum and if I have any influence with my constituents I will urge them to do likewise. It is a conservative and restrictive proposal. The five-year waiting period is very conservative and a recent opinion poll indicated that a sizeable proportion of people think it is unnecessarily restrictive. A person has five years to make up his or her mind and various steps will have to be followed according to the Constitution. Any changes that this House wishes to make in ensuing Bills will have to dovetail into the constitutional provision.

I do not agree that the enactment of divorce legislation will weaken the marriage commitment. This proposed change in the Constitution would make it very difficult to obtain a divorce. People will not be able to get a divorce overnight and will have to think about the matter for five years. It flies in the face of logic to state anything otherwise. Deputy Faulkner gave very interesting statistics on divorce gathered from all over the world. With regard to the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, I am sure he is not suggesting that society there is more decadent and less responsible than it is here. I do not think there is any evidence to suggest that it is. People who oppose this Bill seem to have the impression that divorce makes marriage breakdown. I made the point in December that you do not prevent death by banning funerals. It was also stated that one party to a marriage might want a divorce and the other party would be forced to accept it. Marriage is a partnership between two people. It is a contract and if one person wants to be relieved of the contract that should be allowed, within the reasonable framework put forward in this legislation.

The Catholic Church is entitled to its opinion and entitled to speak to its flock. I am here as a politician and a legislator, not to reflect the views of any particular Church. I regard divorce as a civil liberty. Marriage is a contract and in any ordinary contract there is a way of getting out. If a contract does not work a person must have the right to change his or her mind.

Deputy Mary Flaherty outlined some of the problems she has come across. There are thousands of people involved in such problems and we have a chaotic legal system. There is one danger. If by some chance this Bill is not passed by the people — and I will come to that later — what proposals will the Government have to face up to the situation then? It is assumed that this Bill is going to pass. Even though I support it, I would not be as confident that it is going to win hands down. If it is defeated we will have to face up to the chaotic situation that exists, and something will have to be done about it.

This Bill is not going to increase marital breakdown. Irish society has changed. It is a fact of Irish life that marriages do break down and people should be given another chance. More important, it should be the people's decision and we will have to accept the decision of the people one way or the other. We should never be afraid to face the people on any issue. That is my decision and I will abide by their decision.

In conclusion, there may be Bills which will have to come before the House as a result of the referendum being passed. There may be problems, as outlined by Deputy Woods, in regard to some of the wording. But that is only the small print and when we bring in legislation we will be able to go through it at that time. We are putting proposals before the people to remove the constitutional ban which already exists. For as long as I can remember I have thought that ban in the Constitution was a mistake and I am delighted that we are now going to ask the people to change it. The referendum will be a test of our maturity as a society. The question we must ask ourselves is: are we prepared to give other people a chance? It will be a close-run referendum and I would not be prepared to mortgage the house on the result. One thing that interests me about this proposal is that it is the people who are happily married who are most in favour of this change as they are prepared to give other people a chance. I urge my constituents to vote for it. I certainly will vote for it.

I welcome the fact that this debate is now taking place in this form within this House. I was a member of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Marriage Breakdown. That committee laboured for 18 months and at the conclusion of their deliberations made comprehensive proposals for the reform of the whole area of marital law and, in doing so, acknowledged the need to face up to the issue of divorce and recommended that there should be a referendum. I am pleased that this Bill is now before the House to provide a vehicle for the holding of that referendum. It will give the people of this State, for the first time in almost 50 years, an opportunity to express a view as to whether we should or should not permit divorce.

It is just over 49 years since the current Constitution, enacted in 1937, came into operation. Despite all the talk and debate over the years there has never been an opportunity since then for people to express a view on this issue that could result in bringing about a constitutional change. There have been many opinion polls but, other than providing a great deal of meat for debate and a considerable amount of newsprint they do not, of themselves, effect change. So, I welcome the fact that we have this Bill today and I welcome the document of intent published by the Government which indicates a commitment on the part of the Government to implement many aspects of the report of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Marriage Breakdown and to introduce a number of reforms necessary in the general area of marital law that have been long overdue and long needed.

I want to deal with some of those towards the end of my speech but I want to now deal specifically with the proposal to reform the Constitution. Other Deputies have spoken on this and expressed different views. According to Deputy Woods, this is a far-reaching provision which will allow divorce in a wide variety of circumstances and he was extremely critical of the wording of this provision. His colleague who spoke before me took a different view. I was interested to listen to Deputy Wood's speech because it was my understanding that his party were effectively taking a neutral position in this debate. They wish the issues to be discussed and debated, which is right, and he has a function — as we all have in this House — in teasing out the proposals before us. But I was curious as to the language he used throughout the course of his speech which effectively decried the wording proposed and was very critical of the idea of introducing divorce legislation at all. Yet, his even-handed approach, while clearly being opposed to change, fell short of indicating what alternative proposal he believes would be appropriate to deal with the various issues that arise.

I welcome the fact that in principle it has been indicated that this debate will not divide on party political lines. Indeed, I welcome the freedom that all Members of my party have to express differing and varied views. I respect colleagues' entitlement to do that. We may disagree with each other on what is the right view, but at least we can conduct a mature debate on that issue. I think it is slightly dishonest for the main speaker on the Opposition side, the Spokesman on Justice, to say he is adopting an even-handed view and then effectively give a presentation in this House which appears to be totally opposed to change in this area. If that presentation related to some squabble about the wording for some particular reason and if it was meant in a way that was constructive, one would have anticipated that there might have been some proposal as to how to get around the difficulties that Deputy Woods perceived in this proposition. Of course there was not, and the reason there was not is that most of the difficulties he perceived as existing are spurious, and I hope to demonstrate that fact in dealing with this issue.

It was also noteworthy that he failed in his contribution to deal with the real problems that exist in the area of social reality as opposed to constitutional, academic theory. He did not refer to any great degree to the reality of marital breakdown as it exists within our society today. Effectively, much of his speech was based on the ideal concept of happy families all living together whose marriages do not break down and the perception was that if divorce is introduced it is going to immediately undermine all of these happy marriages. The reality of Irish family life is that, while the overwhelming majority of couples are happily married, there is a significant number, an alarming number of couples, whose marriages are marriages in name only, whose marriages really do not exist except in legal theory. I fail to understand how preserving a dead marriage in name only as a gesture towards the constitutional concept of the family in any way enhances the dignity of marriage or family life or protects the marriages of those families whose marriages are happy and functioning.

This provision is a well-balanced proposal. It provides, first, that divorces cannot be obtained unless there is proof of a marriage having failed for a period of five years. Deputy Woods in his contribution suggested that any husband or wife could simply walk into a court, say their marriage had failed, give an example of a particular instance and, hey presto, a divorce would be granted, that is, divorce on demand. That is not a reality. What Deputy Woods did not refer to in any detail or consider in his contribution was the necessity to prove that the marriage has failed for five years and the necessity to establish that there is no reasonable possibility of reconciliation. They are two very strenuous, difficult conditions, and let nobody regard them as providing for easy divorce. For the deserted wife, whose husband has left her and gone to live with another woman, who is told that she cannot dissolve her marriage for at least five years after the desertion has taken place, what Deputy Woods appears to regard as easy divorce will be seen as a harsh and difficult measure compounding much of the distress of people whose marriages do run into difficulties. It will be very difficult to convince any husband or wife who has been deserted, who knows there is no possibility of the deserted spouse returning, that we are to have the most liberal and easiest form of divorce in the world when they are told they must live apart for five years and prove five years' failure before a divorce can be granted; and they must also establish that there is no practical possibility of reconciliation.

This provision as a whole as opposed to simply extracting a few words and using them to make a spurious argument, does two things. It extends the possibility of divorce and the right to remarry to people whose marriages have completely collapsed, while assuring everyone whose marriage is happy and those who fear that this might be the thin end of the wedge, that there cannot be divorce on demand in Ireland. The suggestion that this is the most liberal form of divorce in the world is so ludicrous as to be unworthy of serious consideration. How can anybody suggest that the need to prove five years' failure, five years' separation, plus the absence of any possibility of reconciliation, is an easy means to obtain divorce? I think Deputy McCreevy put it correctly when he said five years is a very long time to wait for the victims of broken marriages, for those whose marriages have collapsed through no fault of their own and who are denied the possibility of remarriage for at least five years after the date of marital failure.

As I said, I find it very difficult to take seriously the suggestion that in some way we are providing an easy system of divorce. Anybody looking at this House from outside can see that that is an untruthful argument. You do not have to be a lawyer to parse and analyse the effects of this provision, which is that five years' marital failure, five years' separation, must be established effectively in front of a court before a divorce can be obtained. That is different to what exists in most other countries. Examples have been given of the United States and England but then we are dealing with a totally different legal and social system. In other jurisdictions after one or two years' separation, and in New York after six months' separation, people can get divorce decrees; but that is not possible under this provision. No matter who says that this is an easy and liberal system of divorce, be it a religious body or group or anybody else, I think this is the most untenable objection to this constitutional proposal.

What is the reality of the problem facing us in this area? In Irish society we have thousands of people who, according to law, are married but who in factual and social reality are not only not residing with each other but are no longer in real terms married. They may be legally married, they may have the legal facade of marriage attached to their relationship, but many thousands are long separated from their spouses. Referring to them as being a married couple, with all the rights which Deputy Woods suggested are enjoyed under the Constitution by a married couple, is out of touch with reality.

There is a need to pin down the statistics of marital breakdown in Ireland. We have difficulties in this area and we will not know what the real statistics are until we see the results of the current census. There are statistics which indicate that the extent of the problem is far greater than has been calculated to date by any group. The Divorce Action Group suggest that approximately 70,000 adults may be affected by marital breakdown and groups opposed to constitutional change talk about 20,000 to 25,000 people. To some degree the figures are irrelevant in that, if people are separated and parties to a marriage which has irretrievably broken down, I would argue that there is no legal justification for requiring them to remain parties to that relationship.

It is my belief that all these figures are conservative. I base that belief on two sets of statistics which often emerge in a piecemeal way but which have not been analysed in detail and which I believe were not adequately dealt with by the Oireachtas Joint Committee. The statistics, which are a very important indicator of the level of marital breakdown in Ireland, are those which relate to the numbers of couples going through our courts annually seeking court orders. The majority of these couples seek barring orders and/or maintenance orders. Not all who seek barring orders seek maintenance orders and vice versa. There has been an astronomical number of such cases going through our courts. They get no publicity because they are heard in private. Between 1980 and 1985 in excess of 15,000 wives went to the District Court seeking barring orders. All wives who brought such proceedings did not always succeed in getting the barring orders sought but we can assume that in all those cases their marriage had ceased to exist in any real sense. In those six years 30,000 adults were involved in barring cases in the District Court alone, and that is an extraordinarily high figure.

The number of barring orders sought in the District Court between 1976 and 1980 was about 2,000 a year. For the period 1980 to 1985, 8,963 wives sought maintenance orders against their husbands in the District Courts. In some instances the wives seeking maintenance orders were also seeking barring orders, but not always; there is not always an overlap between both. If we said there were 15,000 couples whose marriages had collapsed and who came before our District Courts in a six year period, we would be underestimating the extent of the numbers. Probably about one-third of the couples involved in maintenance proceedings could be added.

Since the Circuit Court assumed a working jurisdiction in the area of family law in 1982 approximately 1,500 couples sought court orders—one spouse sought a court order against the other. The couples who find themselves in the Circuit Court are different to those couples who find themselves in the District Court. Prior to 1982 a similar number of cases would appear in the High Court annually when the High Court dealt with many marital cases. Therefore, we are talking about an extraordinary large number of couples whose marital breakdown problems have found them in our courts system because, following the collapse of their marriage, they have been unable themselves to work out the consequences of that collapse.

We are talking equally about children affected. For example, in 1984 there were 1,500 child custody cases alone in the District Court. Deputies come in here and talk about divorce having an effect on children. It is marital breakdown that has the effect and has all these people in court. Whether we have divorce or not, we have this problem on a larger scale than anybody to date has documented properly. As a practising lawyer who for almost 15 years has worked in the area and, despite being a Member of this House, still works in a part time way with couples whose marriages have broken down, I can say that for every couple who went into the courts when their marriage collapsed a minimum of two couples resolve the consequences of breakdown and separate by agreement without ever going near a court or being a part of these court statistics. Taking the District Court alone, between 1980 and 1985, 15,000 couples whose marriages had collapsed were involved in barring proceedings. For those 15,000 couples in that time I would estimate perhaps another 30,000 who resolved their problems by concluding separation agreements and who never will have to set foot in court at all. I believe that the extent of the problem is not appreciated fully. The statistics of estimates of the total number of couples or the total number of adults are not true indicators of the extent of the problem. These statistics, certified by courts which I am quoting from replies received to questions over the years in this House bring home the extent of the problem.

Reference was made to deserted wives. Currently, 9,353 wives are in receipt of deserted wife's allowance or benefit and for those 9,353 wives, all of whom are deserted and none residing with their husbands, presumably there are 9,353 husbands living somewhere. Reference has been made to the cost of divorce. Have we ever considered the cost to this society of our not having a divorce possibility? What effect has the absence of a possibility of remarrying in the future on the lives of those 9,353 wives in receipt of deserted wife's allowance? Be they 21 or 31 years or age, with one, two or no children, they know that, as our Constitution stands at the moment, the possibility of their ever experiencing a real, happy marriage within the laws of the State is non-existent. How can it be suggested that we are enhancing family life in Ireland, giving dignity to the family, behaving compassionately and humanely, when we say to all of those wives, "We are sorry, we are sacrificing you in the interests of some concept of public good"? How many of those wives wish to remarry-and would have a possibility of remarrying if our Constitution did not prohibit it? I do not know the answer but I am sure that quite a number of them would.

I do not believe that this issue can be argued on the basis of where the financial benefit lay or did not lay. One can argue that currently we lock people into the status of deserted wives and forbid them from experiencing again a family life that is legally recognised by the State. The extent of the problem is enormous and the impact of the absence of divorce is not truly understood. A divorce provision does nothing other than recognise that the marriage has come to an end and extend the possibility of remarriage. Divorce is purely about remarriage and nothing else. We have currently all the necessary mechanisms to recognise that a marriage has in effect terminated. We grant decrees of separation. Our courts recognise separation agreements as legally valid. Courts make barring and maintenance orders, but the law currently denies the possibility of remarriage within the law to those whose marriages have collapsed. I fail to understand how anybody can suggest that it is in the interest of or beneficial to Irish society to prevent a 27 year old battered wife, who has had to obtain court protection from a violent husband and have him barred, from ever remarrying unless she is lucky and her husband dies young, when that possibility might arise. The only circumstances in which we allow a battered wife to remarry is if her husband's dies. What advantage is there to Irish society, to marriage or to family life in saying that it enhances family life to tell that young woman, who is a wife in name only and has no prospect of ever again living with her husband, that we believe that it is in the interests of society that we forbid her to marry ever again? I do not understand how anybody can suggest that that enhances the dignity of marriage or of family life.

What about the 30 year old deserted husband who is left to care for three children and whose wife has gone to live permanently with someone else? What advantage is there in saying to him that we are not again going to allow him to marry? Is there some mystical benefit in locking him into a form of constitutional imprisonment where marriage, instead of being recognised as a viable, valuable, functional relationship, is turned into a constitutional sentence of life imprisonment to be imposed on the casualties of broken marriages? How is that advantageous, human, compassionate?

There is something implicit in the speeches made by Deputy Woods and my colleague, Deputy Glenn, which has not been articulated fully in this debate. The arguments they made in opposition to this proposal are virtually a carbon copy of many of the arguments that have been made against constitutional change by the bishops on behalf of the majority Church. Indeed, Deputy Woods's contribution was extraordinarily similar to it. The bishops' pastoral Love is for Life, published in the spring of last year, is a very valuable document. It is unfortunate that the issue within it that always gets public focus is the issue of divorce. Much of what it says about family life and the need for family law reform is considered, considerate, humane and desirable. Indeed, in this area on occasion the majority Church, frequently criticised for no good reason, has to a considerable degree been streets ahead of politicians in recognising the need for change. Indeed, a report of the Episcopal Council for Social Welfare, a committee of the Catholic Bishops' Conference, articulated in 1975 the need for family courts and for changes in our separation laws, and people often fail to acknowledge that.

Love is for Life presents itself not simply as a theological argument but as a sociological analysis of family life and, in dealing with the issue of divorce — an extract from the new pastoral apparently being prepared is published in The Irish Times today — makes a number of sociological asertions which are not intended to be based on any theological preconceptions. Many of those sociological assertions were contained in the speech by Deputy Woods, although he never once referred to the document or to the fact that he was articulating a particular point of view, as he is entitled to do, and the source of that point of view. His views clearly accord with the views expressed and published in The Irish Times today as being the contents of the new pastoral or letter to be published on this issue.

I wish to turn to some of the sociological assertions contained in the pastoral which mirror similar assertions made by Deputy Woods in his speech. I will quote an extract from The Irish Times today:

It is true that morality cannot be legally enforced. One cannot impose virtue by law. Yet one can by law create conditions unfavourable to virtue. Certain kinds of law can make virtue more difficult and non-virtue more likely. Law and morality are interlinked.

Presumably that means it is virtuous not to have divorce but it is certainly not virtuous to have it. How is it virtuous to deny—this is a sociological perception of how law works in an ordered society and the influence it has—to that 27 year old battered wife or the 30 year old deserted husband to whom I referred the right to remarry? Is it immoral to extend to them the right to remarry, because the suggestion is that it is? It is a colourful assertion with no basis in fact. I believe that the majority of people would take the view that it is virtuous, compassionate and right to extend the possibility of remarriage to those couples whose marriages have collapsed and who are the casualties or victims of broken marriages.

The article went on to say:

Law is, among many other things, a statement of what society regards as socially and morally acceptable.

Is it not socially and morally acceptable to permit the casualties or victims of broken marriages to remarry? Is it socially or morally acceptable to deny to them throughout their lifetime that right? Most people, if asked that question, would take the view that it is acceptable when someone is the casualty of a broken marriage that he or she should be allowed to remarry and would wish to extend to them the possibility and happiness of a second marriage.

In the discussion that has taken place about marriage there is often confusion as to what is being talked about. Marriage can be referred to as a number of things —a contract, a status, a relationship or a constitutionally recognised institution. Many of those who oppose change use, in referring to marriage, the quoted words "a commitment for life". This phrase encapsulates the argument very well. The previously quoted document suggests that if you have divorce the commitment for life is replaced by a legal commitment to stay with one's spouse until one decides otherwise.

The problem with that is that marriage is not simply a contract, it is a relationship and, as the law currently stands, when a marriage breaks down no one can be compelled to continue living with their marital partner. You cannot by constitutional prescription force two people who are incompatible, and who, unfortunately, often grow into a condition whereby they detest each other, to live together. You cannot by constitutional prescription make marriages viable and you cannot, by legal or constitutional rhetoric about commitments for life, ensure that people implement those commitments. When the Constitution was being drawn up the view was that by prohibiting divorce you would ensure that marriages would not break down. We have seen that that is not the reality. All the constitutional rhetoric in the world will not guarantee that couples will have a happy and viable marital relationship and certainly will not ensure that marriages will continue. Is there any purpose in continuing to require the existence of a legal contract which contains the theory that a couple are married when their relationship has collapsed? What is the purpose of preserving a meaningless and empty shell? Why — it has become something of a euphemism in the circumstances — is there a belief that by preserving in theory and adopting the approach of maintaining a marriage that has ceased to exist we are protecting the continued existence of other marriages which are viable and functioning? I do not understand that kind of logic or approach.

The current law does not even provide for the limited circumstances in which members of the majority Church can obtain dissolutions of marriage. The people who express views in opposition to change have never commented on that. When the joint committee were hearing evidence all the minority Churches made the case that whereas the ideal was that marriages would be permanent and happy unions, they all acknowledged that marriages collapse and they sought a constitutional change to recognise the need for divorce. Many of the groups who represented the view of the majority Church said that they were totally opposed to divorce, but none of them seemed to be able to deal with the fact that the current law deprives members of the majority Church of rights which the Church extends to them. I never heard anybody speaking with the authority of that Church explain to me if we continue to prohibit divorce what I, as a legislator, should do to cope with the fact that the Roman Catholic Church permits divorce in clearly defined circumstances. I am talking about divorce and not annulment.

In the new translation of Canon Law published a couple of years ago Canon 1142 and the following canons in that code detail the circumstances in which what the Code of Canon Law describes as dissolutions of marriage can be granted. Under the major heading, "Separation of Spouses", and the subheading, "Dissolution of the Bond", Canon Law prescribes three circumstances in which the marriages of Roman Catholic couples can be dissolved. That is frequently confused by lay people not versed in Canon Law with annulments. It is something quite different and distinct. Under the provisions of Canons 1141 to 1150 there are three circumstances where a marriage can can be dissolved. Firstly, a marriage can be dissolved by the Church if it is not consummated and, secondly, by the Pauline privilege, a marriage entered into by two unbaptised persons is dissolved in favour of the faith of the party who receives baptism if that party enters into a new marriage with a member of the Church. The third case is where a Roman Catholic party marries an unbaptised person. Let us consider the case of a Roman Catholic who marries a Jewish person or somebody of the Moslem faith. If that Roman Catholic person at a future date decides that he or she wants to marry somebody of the Roman Catholic religion that first marriage can also be dissolved by the Church. They are the three specific circumstances in which the Church currently grants dissolutions of marriage.

(Dublin North-West): Not divorce.

There is a dissolution of the marriage which, effectively, is divorce. There is a dissolution of the bond. The current constitutional provision seeks to prevent the State from enacting laws to permit the dissolution of marriage while the proposed provision will permit the State to effectively grant decrees of dissolution where a marriage has failed. The words used are, "the court may in accordance with law grant a dissolution of the marriage..." We have the odd position in which members of the majority religion here can obtain Church dissolutions but are denied the right to obtain civil dissolutions which recognise, effectively, the decree of divorce granted by their Church.

Of course, we have also the other problem that arises: that the nullity laws of the Church have developed to a degree that are far more liberal than our civil laws despite the recent judicial developments of civil law. Between 95 and 100 decrees of annulment are granted annually by the marriage tribunals of the Roman Catholic Church. We have the curious position here whereby, following the granting of such Church decrees of annulment, the Church is prepared to remarry in church, those couples to second spouses, although in civil law the Church decree is not recognised and the couple are still regarded as married to their first spouses.

The position is that the Church, by granting such decrees of annulment and allowing people to remarry, is adding to the social malaise and problems we have. In citing what is happening elsewhere in other countries it is interesting to note that no Member has yet referred to the fact that in England no Church decree of annulment will be granted until a couple have first obtained a civil decree of divorce. It is recognised there that major problems can arise if marriages take place in church without the first marriage being brought to an end civilly. I have difficulty in understanding how the outright objections being voiced to any form of dissolution of marriage by those speaking on behalf of the majority Church can be reconciled with the fact that the Church itself grants dissolutions of marriage and also grants annulments in circumstances in which the civil law cannot do so.

Deputy Woods criticised the constitutional proposal because it provides, as he described it, "in a positive way" for divorce. He described them as a positive form of words and asked why the Government proposed to deal with this matter in this way. I was very confused at that comment because I sat for 18 months on the marital committee with him and we discussed this issue in great detail. One of the things we agreed about in dealing with this issue—we did not always agree about this issue—was that if there was a constitutional change to permit divorce it could not be brought about by simply deleting the current prohibition from the Constitution. Paragraph 7.8.25 of the report of that committee states:

To ensure that no constitutional ambiguity results from any such referendum, [that is a reference to a divorce referendum] the Committee is of the view that any amendment to be voted upon should be in a positive format, replacing the present Article 41.3.2º with a provision, specifically authorising the Oireachtas to legislate for the dissolution of marriage.

Deputy Woods was critical in his comments in regard to this. I do not know if he was doing that for a convenient additional debating point, but he was critical of the fact that this provision was going to positively permit the enactment of divorce legislation. The Deputy was party to that agreed report and that was an aspect of the report that did not produce any division within the committee. It was acknowledged as necessary as a result of the legal advice given and debated within the committee.

Much play is being made about the possible consequences of divorce if we permit it. It has been suggested that the wives of the first marriage might be left destitute, that the children of the first marriage will lose their succession rights. A whole series of worrying possibilities have been deliberately raised and thrown up as deriving from the possible introduction of divorce legislation. What is forgotten in dealing with these is that currently those things can happen. I am not saying they are desirable, but they can happen. Currently, when marriages break down and husbands and wives separate they can make arrangements in regard to their property and financial affairs to ensure that if one or other dies the deserted spouse, or the spouse left alone, is left with no money or property. Currently, the law in this area is defective and the proposed reforms that will allow the courts to make property transfer orders to provide financial protection for wives when marriages breakdown, as promised in the Government's document of intent, will provide far greater protection than currently exists, even without divorce, for many wives who are caught in regard to marital breakdown.

The horror scenario that Deputy Woods has painted is not a legal reality. The legal reality is that the provision it is proposed to include in the Constitution will ensure, and provide as far as any law can, that dependent spouses are fully and properly protected. It will not in any circumstances deprive children of a first marriage, where a divorce has been granted, of their succession rights. That I must describe as—although I do not like resorting to this language—one of the more nonsensical suggestions or proposals in Deputy Woods' speech. The fact that a marriage may be dissolved will not mean that the children of that marriage cease to be children of their parents. Under existing statutory law those children will retain their succession rights. Currently we have this predicament. Where foreign decrees of divorce are granted and recognised here—they are recognised in Ireland in certain circumstances—with a parent or parents living in Ireland and one of the divorced parents dies, the children of those parents still retain all their succession rights. Their position is not affected and the suggestion that it could be affected by a domestic decree of divorce is utter nonsense. The contribution of Deputy Woods on this area was very curious.

Deputy Woods threw up a number of possible horror scenarios if one permits divorce, none of which, I believe, are correct or can be substantiated. He then went on to say that, whereas all of these problems derive from the granting of a divorce, he appears to favour reform and extending the law of nullity. He used the words that civil nullity laws could deal with many of the problems of broken marriages without a constitutional amendment. He did not come to the logical conclusion there. Is he suggesting that nullity laws, instead of divorce laws, should be used to bring marriages to a legal termination when the relationships have irretrievably collapsed? That seemed to be what he was suggesting, that there is no need to go about having a referendum, that we should simply provide for nullity and extend nullity laws. Nullity, as a remedy to deal with marital breakdown instead of divorce, would have a far more devastating effect and consequence for the individuals, parties to the marriage annulled, than ever could a divorce decree.

A civil decree of annulment used as a mechanism instead of divorce would have the following effects. It would be a court decision that a marriage never existed. A couple might have lived together for 15 or 20 years but the effect of that would be to say that marriage was no marriage. The decree of annulment would not permit the courts to provide for maintenance because no longer would a wife be a dependent spouse or divorced spouse; she would cease altogether to be a wife. The wife would lose her maintenance rights. Any property in which she resided would cease to be a family home because the law would take the view that she was no longer a spouse, in fact that she never had been one. Any succession rights that she had would be instantly obliterated by the granting of a decree of annulment. Any children of a marriage that is annulled are retrospectively made illegitimate or, as they used to describe it in the last century, retrospectively bastardised.

That would be the effect of the granting of a decree of annulment. The idea and suggestion that we should forget about having a referendum, that nullity should be used instead of divorce to deal with the consequences of marital breakdown and to extend recognition to the fact that a marriage is at an end, is an extraordinary proposal from someone who has expresed concern as to the possible property or financial consequences for a dependent spouse of the granting of a decree of divorce. It needs to be emphasised that nullity obliterates all rights. Nullity is a court decision that there never was a marriage. Nullity retrospectively bastardises children. A child of 15 or 16, as a result of such a decree, will suddenly be told that the person he thought to be his father and guardian, in law, is not a relation to him at all. I find that an extraordinary suggestion.

The consequences of nullity are so devastating in this context that to object to divorce on the basis that Deputy Woods expressed his objections and then suggest nullity as an appropriate alternative is a totally untenable proposition. He stated that the silent majority would avail of the civil law as to separation or nullity but not divorce. I have no doubt that there will be people whose marriages tragically collapse, who may in future years still avail of separation, that small numbers of them may have the possibility of getting a decree of annulment, and who will not go on to obtain divorces because of their personal religious beliefs. But this provision will not make divorce compulsory. They will not be compelled into a position where they have to seek divorces. I find the idea that nullity in some way should be used instead of a divorce law or divorce jurisdiction something that does not withstand any real examination.

A lot has been made of the argument that if we provide for divorce it will result in broken marriages, that divorce of itself will be a catalyst to marital breakdown. At the beginning of my speech I referred to the statistics which show that in the absence of divorce we have a gigantic problem of marital breakdown in any case.

There are two quotes worth putting on the record of the House from the oral hearings of the Joint Committee on Marriage Breakdown. They deal with both the issues of nullity and of divorce and with a lot of the alarmist comments made about divorce causing marital breakdown. They deal also with the oddities of nullity. The comments come from Doctor Jack Dominian, to whom Deputy Flaherty referred, who is not only a well known expert in the area of marriage but is also a renowned Catholic theologian who has written many works in the area of theology and marriage. He has a great deal of expertise, probably one of the people between both the Republic of Ireland and the British Isles who has most expertise in the area of marital breakdown. He was one of the people who came to make submissions to the oral hearings of the Joint Committee on Marriage Breakdown, one of the people requested by the committee to present their views. He dealt with the issue of nullity as follows. He said—and I quote from page 46 of the Minutes of Evidence taken before the committee:

The heart of nullity as practised in the Catholic Church is really a statement at the end that this marriage did not meet the minimum criteria of the nature of marriage. This is really a declaration that there never was a marriage here. It is a very funny declaration, because people can have nullities after up to 20 years of marriage, but that is essentially what it is all about.

He was then asked to deal with the issue of divorce. He was asked: was it his view that marriage break down because of the availability of divorce, was it divorce of itself that was the catalyst to broken marriages? Reference was made to the statistics in England and in America. Doctor Dominian dealt in great detail with what he saw as the causes of marital breakdown which did not relate in fact to the availability of divorce at all but which related to the nature of the society in which people were living, their personal religious beliefs, the social position of that society, the economics of that society, the position of women in society. He detailed a whole series of matters. In dealing with this issue he said, and I quote:

I have to say that if this room was filled by the Roman Catholic Bishops of Ireland and they were pushing me very hard about divorce, I would have to say very clearly that their fear that civil divorce would make marital breakdown worse or enhance it or facilitate it—my answer would have to be: no, it will make very little difference.

That comes from a man who approaches the issue from a particular theological perspective, from a man who has great experience of working in the area of marital breakdown. It is regrettable and unfortunate that this fear is being floated. How baseless is that fear in the context of someone having to wait five years to get a divorce after their marriage has failed. In what way can that be seen as an incentive to separation? People often lose sight of the fact—I have witnessed it at first hand with many people—that no one takes with equanimity the collapse of their marriage no matter what the circumstances. Usually it takes two people to make a broken marriage. Few marriages collapse due solely to the fault of one spouse. Usually it is due to the interaction of a couple, each party to the marriage, that a marriage breaks down. But the realisation that a marriage has totally collapsed can be devastating for the parties affected by it, the sense of grief and loss experienced by the couple who, when they did marry, genuinely believed, to use the words of the Bishop's Pastoral, that love was for life. Few enter marriage with any different belief but love may be for life for many people, but not for all. The grief that people experience when their marriages collapse can be exacerbated by the inhumanity of the law which denies to them the possibility of a second chance, a second possibility to enter into a marriage that may function, may be viable and may work.

Reference was made to children and my colleague, Deputy Flaherty, dealt with that issue. No doubt, children are affected by marriages which break down and children in Ireland are currently being affected by marriages that break down. Marriages will continue to break down in this country, whether we have divorce or not. For many children, the possibility of a parent remarrying will extend the possibility to them of seeing happy family life at first hand, having experienced or witnessed very unhappy family life, living within a house in which their parents are continuously at war with each other. I do not accept the spurious argument that divorce of itself in some way prejudices children, or is harmful to them. I do not see how in any way it can enhance the position of children or protect their welfare to deny to a parent with whom a child is living the possibility of remarriage when the position is such that their parents will never again live together in a real marriage relationship. Much of the research done in this area has clearly established that, so far as children are affected, they are affected by the fact that the marriage breaks down, not by the fact of divorce. Some of the research which suggests otherwise often confuses the terminology by using the word "divorce" as synonymous with marital breakdown.

The feelings which children have as a result of parents separating are real feelings of grief and concern and sometimes they feel abandoned by the separating parent. We have that situation at the moment. For a country so concerned about this issue, where people in the House devote themselves to the rhetoric of concern, it is extraordinary how little research we have done as to the impact of broken marriages in Ireland on Irish children. We continuously have to rely on the experiences of other countries which could be quite different from ours.

I have no doubt that this issue will be widely debated during the coming weeks, both outside and inside this House. I also hope that the debate will be restrained and considered and that people will not, for party political reasons or otherwise, throw up false fears to prevent rational and reasoned consideration of the proposals which have been made.

I said at the outset that I wanted to conclude by very briefly moving away from the divorce issue and referring to the other proposals that the Government have made. Deputy Woods listed the legislation in existence to protect spouses and suggested that the provision of divorce would deprive dependent spouses of all that protection. I think that I dealt with that adequately and clearly expressed the view that it is not true. Again, the rhetoric of this House, to someone still relatively new to the House, deserves to be treated cynically by people outside the House. It is noteworthy that much of this legislation to which Deputy Woods referred, such as the Family Home Protection Act of 1976, and the Family Law (Maintenance of Spouses and Children) Act of 1976, which provided both for maintenance and barring orders, came from a Coalition Government. It did not come from the party opposite. It was legislation which in its time provided protections that had been needed for over a decade and had long been sought. I cannot help being somewhat cynical about the views expressed on that issue and am even more cynical for another reason. It is that the constitutional rhetoric about concern for the family is not something experienced in real terms by those who come into contact with marital breakdown and the victims of marital breakdown who find themselves before our courts. We have currently a court system operating which can be described as Dickensian in the way in which it treats couples whose marriages have collapsed. I would invite any Deputy who is going to engage in rhetoric of concern about the family, and who does so in the context of opposing this change, to visit the Dublin Circuit Court on any Monday morning to see how we protect families, cherish the institution of marriage and take seriously the need currently to provide protection for children and dependent spouses.

Deputy Woods's party in the Courts Act of 1981 sent most of our marital law out of the High Court and into the Circuit Court. There should have been a good reason for doing so. It should have made it less expensive for people who have to litigate and are caught in the tragedy of broken marriages to have their problems dealt with in the Circuit Court. However, the problem with that court is that there are no facilities to deal with marital problems. None of the judges has any special training in these areas. As a practising lawyer, no doubt, I shall get into trouble for saying this, but very few of them operating in the Circuit Court have any real sensitivity or insight into the problems, and that applies to a number of those who are currently adjudicating in the area of marital law.

On a Monday morning in the Dublin Circuit Court there may be 30 or 40 husbands and wives hanging around in corridors, with no privacy and no consultation rooms available, being pushed out of the way by six foot gardaí who have criminal offenders attached to them by handcuffs as they make their way into the Criminal Court which is adjacent to the Circuit Court dealing with family cases. Each of the partners whispers and talks to his or her lawyer or barrister across the corridor and then heads into a court which, to be diplomatic, could be described as less than adequate to deal sensitively with the problems deriving from marriage breakdown. It was the party opposite who subjected people to that system and who are now articulating the rhetoric of concern for the Irish family, marital breakdown and family life. I find that nauseating. I am one of the few Members of this House to see it at first hand on a weekly basis. I see the shock that registers on the faces of young wives when they see the system to which they are being subjected, the vagaries of that system and the lack of uniformity in the application of the law by judges, many of whom would prefer to be dealing with other areas of law.

I welcome the proposal made by the Minister to establish family courts, but that proposal will have to be teased out. In welcoming the principle of that proposal and acknowledging that this Government are the first in the history of this State to acknowledge the need for family courts, and recognising that they have done so in response to the report from the Oireachtas marital committee, I would sound notes of caution about that. If we implement family courts, let us make them real family courts. I should like confirmation in this House that we are not talking about a mere gesture of describing the current Circuit Court system as a family court. I should like someone to confirm to me, by the end of this debate, that the family courts we are going to establish will take all marital family law disputes which come before our courts out of the current District, Circuit and High Court system and have them dealt with within a separate court structure which operates within the Circuit Court areas, with judges specially qualified and specially appointed, with a proper back-up welfare service attached to it. I want some sort of recognition to be given to the fact that judges operating in family courts require some type of inter-disciplinary training. It is not good enough that the fact that barristers or solicitors have been qualified for ten or 12 years should of itself result in a decision being made that they are the appropriate people to be appointed to adjudicate in family courts. I want this proposal fleshed out.

Whether we have or do not have divorce, family courts are desirable of themselves. It is a disgrace to this House that the constitutional rhetoric of years gone by did not result in recognition long ago of the need for a special system of family courts. Now that we have a commitment to provide those courts, we must get it right. It must not be a gesture in the direction of calling an existing court system a family court. The same applies in the context of the provision of conciliation and mediation services. Like Deputy Flaherty, I take great exception to the suggestion that those of us in this House who want to see change, who recognise the need for divorce and who recognise a need to extend to couples the right to remarry are in some way opposed to the family or anti-family.

One of the curiosities is that most of us who are looking for that change are people who either still within this House or prior to our coming to this House worked at firsthand with the victims and casualties of broken marriages. I am not sure that can be said by Deputy Woods or my colleague, Deputy Glenn, or some of the others who are opposed to change. I want to see a humane and compassionate system which allows people whose marriages have collapsed to be dealt with in a sensitive and considerate way. I want to get away from the rhetoric of concern and see a substantive reality brought to bear on the way we currently operate in these areas. We must recognise that the thousands of people whose marriages are marriages in name only are entitled to have the possibility of future marital happiness extended to them.

I hope that following polling day on the referendum this new provision will be included in the Constitution. I am going to sound a warning and it is that I do not believe anybody who is in favour of change should be complacent and believe this will automatically succeed as a constitutional proposal. I do not think those people who work in these areas and who have seen at firsthand the tragedies of marital breakdown—all those thousands of families throughout the country who have been touched by marital breakdown and the sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, neighbours and friends whom they have seen to be the victims of marriages which have collapsed—and who recognise that in all humanity and compassion constitutional change is desirable should assume between now and the end of June, or whenever we have polling day, that because the opinion polls now say there is a majority in favour of change there will automatically be a successful result to this referendum.

All of those who believe there is a need for change should in the coming weeks commit themselves to ensuring that not only do they vote but their friends and everyone else vote also. Nobody on the day of this referendum should be too busy with their own lives to forget the need to vote for compassion and humanity to be extended to the lives of those whose marriages have collapsed.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate which in many respects is an historic occasion. There have been many times over the past few years when people like myself and others who have consistently campaigned for the abolition of the ban on divorce in the Constitution felt that there was no party, certainly no major party, willing to grasp this nettle. The credit has to go to the Government for having done so. I am sure there are Deputies in the Government parties who would prefer not to have that credit but at least they are prepared at this point to permit the people to give their verdict on this very important issue.

I wish to refer to one of Deputy Shatter's final points in connection with the referendum in that clearly the referendum has still to be won. There will be no automatic passing of this referendum. I would also make the point that, assuming the legislation comes before the current Dáil, there may be a far different approach by Deputies on all sides of the House towards the specific divorce legislation which has to be passed once the referendum has been won. As I say there are Deputies on the Government side as there are clearly Deputies on the Fianna Fáil side who oppose divorce.

It is something of a wonder to me that the Fianna Fáil Party have taken the line which they have which is a line of apparent neutrality on this central issue for the people. Being the largest single party in the State I would have expected them to take a more responsible attitude to the issue. It is nonsensical for a political party involved in the politics of this State since 1926 to adopt the attitude that they as a party will not be involved in deciding a constitutional issue and that individual Deputies may make up their own minds and may campaign in their own areas, if they wish, one way or the other. This is, to my mind, an abdication of their responsibility towards political matters in this State.

Having said that I would also say that clearly there have been changes within the Fianna Fáil Party since the expulsion of Deputy O'Malley who was suspended for having failed to support the party in their opposition to the family planning amendment last year. It now seems that Deputies are permitted to have their own views and to express those views. As I say, the Government deserve credit for bringing forward this legislation. I would say the reasons it has been brought before us at this point derive more from the need for the survival of the parties concerned in view of the pressures which have been building up both within the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party for development and progress in social legislation.

I have expressed reservations about the Bill before us today but I recognise, and it has to be recognised by all those who want a divorce jurisdiction, that whatever our reservations are about the specific criteria which are being included in the Constitution, basically the ban on divorce is being abolished by this amendment. It is, therefore, a considerable advance over the situation which we are presently faced with. For that reason also there is a clear obligation on all parties, and I am not just talking about political parties but also about lay groups and so on, who recognise the need for humane divorce legislation, to get out and co-operate with each other in ensuring that the referendum is won and that there is a massive yes vote on this amendment. I and my party will be exercising whatever ability we have outside and inside this House to encourage people to support the referendum.

Debate adjourned.
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