I am grateful for the opportunity to raise in the House the Government's decision of last month, as announced by the Attorney General, to refer the White Paper on nullity to the Law Reform Commission. I believe that this is a retrograde step becaue it will result in further delay in getting a Bill introduced to reform and update the law on nullity. What is required is not further academic study but political will and leadership. Senator Justin Keating has indicated that he would like to support me in this motion and I will stop in sufficient time to allow him to intervene in the debate and to give the Minister ample time to reply.
In order to make my point clearly I must refer briefly to the recent steps to bring about legislative reform of the procedure for bringing nullity proceedings before our courts. The previous Government were committed in principle to introducing legislative reform. This was clearly stated in the foreword to the White Paper on Nullity published by the former Attorney General in August, 1976. So in August, 1976 there was a decision in principle by the then Government to introduce a reform in the law relating to nullity.
The White Paper consists of a discussion paper which summarises the history of and the current position relating to nullity proceedings and it also contains the draft Nullity of Marriages Bill, 1976. I should like to quote briefly from paragraph 3 of the White Paper, which reads:
An examination of the law relating to nullity matters in this country leads to the conclusion that there is a real and pressing need for reform.
The then Attorney General, Mr. Declan Costello, invited submissions on this discussion paper and asked that these be sent to the Attorney General's Office before January, 1977. A considerable number of submissions were made by interested groups, voluntary bodies and others who had a particular knowledge of the urgency of the need for reform. The Attorney General consulted very widely on the matter. Indeed, I participated in drafting two submissions, one on behalf of the Labour Women's National Council, which was critical of certain aspects. particularly of viewing nullity as the major way to cope with the incidence of marital breakdown in Ireland, and the other on behalf of CHERISH, which drew attention to the fact that the Nullity of Marriages Bill, as set out in the back of the White Paper, did not protect the status of the child of an annulled marriage and that this could result in the bastardising of that child. CHERISH recommended that any such child should retain its legitimacy in order to prevent the extension of the stigma of illegitimacy to the child.
There were a number of submissions from organisations, individuals, the law schools, private bodies and so on.
Now that there has been a discussion paper, a draft Bill and widespread public discussion, it is regrettable that the Government have not seen fit to take a political decision as a matter of urgency and introduce a Bill before the Houses of the Oireachtas. Instead, they decided to refer the matter, in a general way, to the Law Reform Commission. The problem in that is that the Law Reform Commission already have a very extensive programme for law reform. This programme was published last January. It is a very wide-ranging programme; it is the first programme for examination of certain branches of the law with a view to their reform. Under the heading of "family law", the Law Reform Commission, at page 9 of their report, refer expressly to the fact that certain proposals by the Government for the amendment of the law of nullity have recently been put forward by the Attorney General for discussion. Therefore, they will not get involved in the area of nullity; that is being dealt with in another way.
Apart from the fact that the Law Reform Commission are committed to a considerable programme of work which they decided in consultation with the former Government and published last January, they also have limited staffing potential. At the moment there is a director of research and two full-time research counsellors. One of the research counsellors will be leaving at the end of the year to take up a position as professor of law in University College Cork. Presumably he will be replaced, but still there are only these two full-time researchers. The five members of the Commission do not become involved in detailed research of this kind. It would seem that the Law Reform Commission lack the capacity to enlarge further their already heavy workload to take on this new field of study referred to them by the Government.
The question might be asked whether there is real urgency in bringing about reform of the law of nullity. I believe that, without doubt, it is an urgent matter. I should like to begin by referring briefly to some figures of the number of suits for nullity brought in the civil courts. The figures of the number of proceedings instituted in the years from 1966 to 1975, which have been made available by the High Court office, show a total of 31 proceedings instituted for civil nullity. In other words, the number of proceedings instituted ran at an average of two or three a year. Also, these are figures of proceedings instituted; they need not necessarily show the number of proceedings brought to final conclusion. In contrast I should like to draw the attention of Senators to the figures for Catholic marriage annulments for 1976. I quote from an article in The Irish Times of 15th February last under the heading, “Marriage tribunals gave 77 decrees of nullity”. The report states:
Seventy-seven decrees of nullity were granted by the four Catholic Regional Marriage Tribunals in Ireland last year. Thirty-five nullity applications were rejected after full investigation. The tribunals in Armagh, Dublin, Cork and Galway receive about 800 letters of application. Many of those involved did not pursue their applications beyond this initial step.
The article goes on to look at past figures that show significantly higher numbers of people getting Catholic Church annulments but still having their marriages regarded as valid existing marriages under the civil law of the State.
As a practising barrister I know the harrowing personal circumstances that this can bring about for the individuals involved. The problems are immensely complex, problems relating to the position of children, if there are children, to the legal rights of spouses under the Succession Act, to the inability of people to regularise in decency with some degree of speed and efficiency their marital relations and their marital status. It is very bad indeed that, having had a momentum to bring about a change in the law, this seems now to be sidetracked and referred yet again to a more academicly oriented body for further discussion.
What further discussion should there be? It is now up to the Government as a matter of urgency to take a political decision on the scope of the measure and to introduce legislation. The greatest deterrent to bringing nullity proceedings in our civil courts is the high cost involved. This is aggravated by the absence of a State scheme of civil legal aid and advice in this area of family law. It tends to be a very costly proceeding because the petition for nullity is cumbersome and difficult.
I do not want to go into the merits of the matter. We are not enabled in the limited time scale on the adjournment to examine the actual procedure for nullity and the substantive issues involved. I should like to emphasise the point that there was a momentum to reform the law relating to nullity. It is an important and specific part of family law reform. There had been a discussion paper, a draft Bill and very wide consultation. Why, now, do the new Government have to refer the matter to the Law Reform Commission who already have a significant programme of work, who have very limited research resources and who cannot in fairness be asked to produce proposals within any reasonable time? The danger is that the Law Reform Commission may become the whipping boy, the excuse for further delay in the matter. This would be a highly regrettable step so I would draw the attention of the Houses to the apparent policy decision of the Government in the matter. I would ask the Minister to reconsider it, to take the relevant documents — the White Paper, the draft paper and the public response to the Bill — and put them back to the hands of the Government and to have a Bill introduced in the current year before the Houses of the Oireachtas.
