Vol. 467 No. 1
161 Mr. Shatter asked the Minister for Equality and Law Reform the States which have to date ratified the 1990 Rome Convention on the simplification of procedures for the recovery of maintenance payments; and whether this State has entered into any direct reciprocal arrangements to apply the provisions of the Convention with any other EU state pending the Convention's ratification by all member states of the EU. [12793/96]
Apart from Ireland, Italy is the only other EU member state to have ratified the Rome Convention. There are no proposals to enter into bilateral reciprocal arrangements as provided for in Article 9 of that Convention with any other member state of the European Union. There are already arrangements between those states because they are all parties to the United Nations Convention on the Recovery Abroad of Maintenance. In addition, reciprocal arrangements exist between the State and the United Kingdom under the Maintenance Act, 1974.
