I welcome the report by the Joint Committee on Marriage Breakdown. I think in the circumstances they found themselves in they did a wonderful job. It is rather an emotional subject. It was not easy to extract evidence in the way that the answers could be set out in layman's language and readable, if you like, so that Senators could get a grasp of it in order to make their contributions. However, they have done a good job there. I possibly have one little reservation about it, that they have not been more positive about the question of dissolution of marriage. The other point I would like to make in opening is on a remark that too much emphasis has been given to the debate on divorce, and I am not speaking about the last speaker; it was somebody earlier in the day. In order to put that right I would like to read a few extracts from the Labour Party submission to the Committee on Marital Breakdown.
The Labour Party does not seek to pre-empt the deliberation of the committee on a problem to which there are no easy solutions and which is the cause of very real human tragedy. We believe that in setting before the committee the views of the Labour Party there will be a framework which is intended to assist the constructive deliberations of the committee members. The Labour Party believes in the removal of the present constitutional prohibition of any law that provides for a grant of dissolution of marriage. We believe there is a need for the introduction of a law providing for divorce in certain circumstances and we recognise the importance of other legislative and social changes in order to strengthen the family unit, reduce the rate of marital breakdown and alleviate the suffering of adults and especially children involved.
It is quite clear that the Labour Party in their submission were not just talking about divorce. While I will naturally be referring to divorce or cancellation or dissolution of marriage at various times throughout my contribution, I hope that I am not really hung up on the proposition that all marital problems can be solved by divorce. On marriage breakdown there seem to be two conclusions: the conclusion on the one hand that we should not have divorce and, on the other hand, that we should have it but we should not rush it. One of those conclusions will have to be resolved some way or the other. The only argument then is when it should be done. In my view the debate has got to a point when not only has the Committee on Marriage Breakdown been sitting for the past two years and hearing representations from various bodies but they have read fairly extensively and this debate has had a very substantial number of contributors. That will be available also for consideration, plus the fact that when it goes into the Dáil a very lengthy and detailed discussion will take place, and by the time it has finished in the Dáil we will have provided ample information to the people. It is a question of how we disseminate it.
Something extra will need to be done on disseminating more information, but there is enough of it available and the people around who are in favour and the people who are against have enough to know what way they should go. I would like to quote also from the Labour Party submission again just to make sure that we are not misunderstood. Our submission went on to say:
1º The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of marriage and to protect it against attack. The State shall take measures to encourage adequate preparation for marriage and to promote the stability of marriage.
2º It shall be the duty of the State, in making provisions in cases of marital breakdown, to seek reconciliation between the parties to the marriage, to provide for the physical and economic protection of vulnerable family members and to afford a means for the disolution of marriages which have broken down irretrievably.
The Labour Party urges the Joint Committee to give consideration to the proposal that the basis for dissolution of marriage should not be on proof of fault by one partner but on irretrievable breakdown of the marriage. We believe that proof of part of fault is likely to decrease the possibility of reconciliation and add considerably to unhappiness, particularly of the children.
They go on to say:
To this end we recommend that the financial provisions should not be confined to a narrow consideration of proprietorial principle — such as whose property is it? has the partner acquired an interest by contribution? or in maintenance principles — such as, is there any reason why the husband should not fulfill his obligations to maintain his wife? We urge the Committee to formulate financial proposals that will not be confined to Lump Sum Awards Income Payments, Limited Property adjustments.
5. The Labour Party urges the Joint Committee to undertake a comprehensive review of Court Proceedings to deal with marriage breakdown. In particular it is suggested that Family Courts be enabled to provide a counselling and reconciliation service which will also ensure that due consideration is given to separation and financial arrangements before a judicial decision is reached.
6. The Labour Party reaffirms its commitment to the abolition of the concept of illegitimacy and requests the Joint Committee to declare its support for measures designed to achieve this abolition.
I am going on with this because it is very necessary to establish the fact that we are not just talking about divorce. We are actually talking about the whole question of marriage breakdown, the problems it creates and the courses of action that are needed to assist in saving marriages and to deal with the question of marriages that have irretrievably broke down, to look after children and the spouses etc. I quote:
The Labour Party does not seek divorce as the only, or best solution to difficult and troubled marriages. A divorce law which makes divorce easy to come by will add to the problem of marriage breakdown rather than help to deal with it. However, any approach to the problem which ignores the real pressures which have led to the alarming increase in the rate of marriage breakdown cannot be said to be addressing the real problems, but merely the sysmptoms.
The law which the Labour Party would support therefore is one based on the concept of irretrievable breakdown. Such a law would place a heavy onus on the petitioner for divorce to establish that irretrievable breakdown has indeed occurred and an equally heavy onus on appropriate agencies of the State to ensure that acceptable efforts at reconciliation have been tried and failed. The Labour Party urges the Joint Committee to commit itself at an early date to the removal of the constitutional prohibition on divorce. We suggest to the Committee that this would be achieved best by the deletion of the present provision but by substitution of terms similar to the following:
Then they go on to give the working of the thing which I have not got to hand. The Labour Party submission went on to say:
We urge the Committee to review the provisions of the Matrimonial Causes (Ireland) Act 1870, with the objective of reforming the procedure for the granting of a judicial separation (divorce a mensa et thoro). The Labour Party urges the Joint Committee to consider and propose a definition of what might constitute “Irretrievable Breakdown”. We suggest to the Committee that this definition would include (a) desertion; (b) a substantial period of separation; (c) inability to live together consequent on adultery; (d) inability to live together consequent upon conduct.
The Labour Party suggests that the Joint Committee would recommend that the question of joint ownership of the family home should be considered in the context of legislation to provide for the dissolution of marriage.
The Labour Party believes that the approach of the Committee to the consideration of Financial Provisions in cases of marital breakdown should seek to place the partners, in so far as it is possible, in the financial position in which they would be if the marriage had not broken down.
I want to apologise for being a little bit hesitant reading that. It is a photostat copy which was not very clear.
I merely started off my contribution by trying to get that on the record for the very purpose that people have suggested by their remarks, maybe not meant to be as damaging as I have taken them up, that the Labour Party is not interested in the question of the total issue of marital breakdown but rather have a hang up on divorce and that they are being pressurised in some way by the Divorce Action Group into going for it. Everybody knows by now that the Labour Party, which was founded in 1912, which predates the State, has been advocating social change for a long time. I will not say it was introduced in the seventies but certainly this question of the dissolution of marriages where there is irretrievable breakdown has been a hot issue within the Labour Party right throughout the seventies. Before that it was on the cards but it gained momentum in the early seventies and from then on it has been a regular feature of our policy year after year at our annual conferences.
In trying to make some sort of a contribution I have to think about the question of why marriage and why divorce. Perhaps a lot of what I am about to say may well have come across in the minutes of evidence in a different kind of way, but possibly to a great extent with the same meaning. Nevertheless I can only walk my own path and put it in my own way, so that is the kind of a road I am going down.
To open that part of my contribution I would like to say that to me anyway divorce and separation I can only describe as being a destruction of a mutually constructed edifice, that took a lot of effort, work, time and tolerance. The marriage itself when it was being entered into has got to be looked at in the sense of whether there is permanency and reliability rather than just a marriage being entered into at first sight and without much thought. We must recognise that the edifice has to be built together and the onus cannot be left on one particular partner. It poses a couple of questions. Why marriage and why divorce?
I do not think you can answer the question of why divorce or why marriage in total, but I will try anyway. In the case of marriage it can be answered in the sense that if anything goes wrong with the marriage the children are protected legally. That is to say, if divorce occurs or separation and one partner dies not having made a will a certain amount of financial security is afforded to the wife who, despite changes in the law, is still able to claim maintenance. The demand for as long as ye both shall live calls for a lot of compromise and greater unselfishness than many of us are capable of giving. Yet many people who are adult and mature enough enter into marriage with this in mind and it works in a great many cases. It calls for a lot of compromise and great unselfishness that many of us just do not possess.
We could ask, why marriage? It is the old fashioned ideal of an exclusive one-to-one relationship which is very much in keeping with tradition. There are hundreds of thousands of marriages that can and do succeed throughout a lifetime. No doubt those marriages carry great satisfaction with them. They carry the satisfaction of living with a permanent sexual partner who is both attractive and capable of sharing the sexual experiences in a mutually satisfying way. There are other good reasons too why marriages succeed, for example when people get satisfaction from giving rather than just being takers. These two factors seem to be the two main motivations for entering marriage.
This is where the work of building the edifice comes in. The longer the one-to-one mutually sexually satisfying experience remains, the more compromise becomes possible. Besides the sexual benefits we spoke of there is the basic instinct of being satisfied when setting up a home. No matter how frugal that home may turn out to be, it will be a home that will have signs of a happy shared experience, depending on the people's likes. For example, toys and souvenirs give pleasure to some people who are sharing a happy experience. This type of marriage results from living for each other. Again, and many people mentioned it here in a different way, there is the blessing of the Church which most people following tradition in Ireland would always want.
Why divorce? Even though we have tens of thousands of marriages which are very happy none of us in this House would cod ourselves that there are not tens of thousands of marriages that have broken down. There may be arguments as to the extent or the degree and how many of them would be at a stage where they could be rescued. We are talking about a substantial number of broken down marriages. We cannot just think of the happy marriages alone or the ones that it is possible to rescue. The one that brings about the most difficulty is the one that has irretrievably broken down. It is understandable then that people should put more emphasis on this kind of marriage in a debate of this nature. Having regard to my earlier remarks about the Labour Party's submission I trust that the House will not take it that that is all we are actually concerned about.
There are many reasons for marriage breakdowns. The committee got them. There is the ill-matched relationships. Ill-matched relationships do not always lead to hate and bitterness and brutality. They just do not work; the people cannot live together; they are ill-matched. On the other hand, in the case of many ill-matched relationships whether there is brutality or not, it is the beginning of the end of a marriage unless the people within that marriage are able and adult enough to be counselled and reconciled, depending on the stage to which it has got. If it is an ill-matched marriage from the beginning then it is only a matter of time before the marriage gets into trouble and it would seem to me that in many of those cases it never was possible for the marriage to succeed in the first place. It certainly was not possible to build an edifice in the manner I was speaking about where there is a mutual surrendering of rights, where there is co-operation and understanding, a giving rather than a taking, because if people are ill-matched it is unlikely that the necessary ingredients that I have just mentioned ever existed. Consequently the marriage was bound to run into some difficulty.
There are many other reasons to account for irretrievable breakdowns in marriage. There is chronic ill-health, teenage unemployment, redundancy, the influence of the media. Those are only some of the many contributory factors. There is the argument put forward that ease of achieving divorce, which has been mentioned here, increases the numbers seeking divorce. It would be true to say that it would augment it. The Labour Party recognise in their submission that it would augment the numbers. I do not think it is an argument to suggest that it would actually cause a divorce to come about. After all, the divorce is merely the legal termination of a contract. It is not the cause of it. Consequently, people who have been living in a miserable existence throughout their lives because there was no "out" for them and who could not insulate themselves against the problems of the world may, if divorce comes about, find an opportunity. Thay may augment the figures. But that would not have been the reason for the divorce to be brought about. The marriage was cancelled. People were living not in a postponed state but in a state where they had cancelled each other out and no marriage existed.
There is also the argument that if the contract is terminated by divorce some people will not try so hard to preserve the marriage. This debate is all about trying to find out why some marriages break down in Ireland and what the remedies are. I am not talking about Irish remedies. I am talking about remedies. In the long run if something is as irretrievable and facts are put forward which prove this then the position is not longer just a breakdown: something has been cancelled out of the lives of people; it is no longer a union. All that holds it up is that there is no law there to provide for the divorce by which the spouse can be assured of maintenance, the children protected etc. In the context I have so far used one could say that no edifice was ever built. Maybe they began to try and build an edifice or something. When no marriage exists obviously no edifice has been built. The reasons for the breakdown must be gone into in greater depth.
The committee have gone a good distance in stating some of the problem, not all of it, before us. We are very glad of that and this facilitates this type of debate. I trust it will facilitate the debate in the Dáil even further. We can talk about all sorts of causes. We can talk about sexual incompatibility, about resentment and frustration. One partner might still be as keen for the sexual side of the marriage at 50 as they were at 20, whereas the other party could well have never felt too keen and by the age of 50 might consider himself or herself exempt.
Therefore, all sorts of problems arise and can be contributory factors. It may not lead to marital breakdown. In that sort of a relationship there is always the danger of fake enjoyment and consequently living a lie. When you live a lie within a union that is supposed to be co-operative, supposed to be giving of yourself rather than taking, that will inevitably lead to frustration and humiliation. It may be the husband who is frustreated and humiliated. The wife, then, will take on distress and anxiety or vice versa.
It might have been easier for me to say that where mental cruelty exists it will lead to the breakdown of marriage, but that would not be satisfactory. There are many forms of physical and mental cruelty. There is gross physical abuse; there are heavy fisted partners who do not normally fit in with the normal pattern of abuse but abuse their spouses in a different way. There are alcoholics who might beat each other up but yet dote on each other and it would not make grounds for divorce. The problem in that particular situation would arise where one of the spouses found some other sort of weakness, something that had been concealed for years and was then exposed, which would hurt the other partner more than the actual thumping they might have been giving each other over the years. This might be another area that might lead to the question of marriage breakdown.
I submit that divorce is destructive. It should only be used in dire necessity and certainly never casually. It is the destruction of something that has been mutually constructed. In the first instance we must take particular note that the edifice that was supposed to be built, which took a great deal of tolerance, effort, understanding and adjustments, just never got to that particular point and therefore never existed.
We have already asked why people marry. We now have to try to find out why marriages get to the point of breakdown and then continue this process of deduction to understand why a substantial number of marriages become what I would describe, based on some of the case histories that I had the privilege of looking at as a dungeon, and from there to proceed to provide an opportunity for those in that dungeon-like situation to be given a second chance. I would like to talk about simpletons — I do not say that in a derogatory way — about love, sex and marriage. They are very often deluded into believing that there is somewhere a fated, predestined mate, that it is a reality and that they have just to wait around for this love at first sight. These people are carried away with these super-romantic notions. They do not realise that entering into marriage is a serious matter, that it is only for emotionally mature people. There is no full recognition by the simpleton of love, sex and marriage, that it is a serious business. It is not for people with super-romantic notions. When I say that I mean those people who would be carried away by the movie model of so-called romance.
Again, without being derogatory, these simpletons about love, sex and marriage have not a notion that love of a real adult kind is of slow growth, it is difficult and one could even say that it is rare. In their own immaturity many of them think that it can happen of itself. Therefore, we have in this category many people who enter into marriage without understanding that if they want a life of love which has real value, they have to build it together by mutual care and effort; it has to be created, fitted and tailored to the needs and well-being of both parties. I do not want to over-use the word "simpleton" but when I was running the streets of Dublin it was a word which was used regularly. In my experience there are simpletons about love, sex and marriage who have not the maturity to understand the two-sided nature of marriage which calls for a joining in a co-operative venture.
All of what I have said so far points to the need for the giving of evidence by both parties of their own fitness in the courting or pre-marital stage of their lives. I am not suggesting that if they follow this guidance or listen to this point of view or even this debate, that there will never be any hitches, but where hitches occur, if they have taken the proper precautions of pre-judging and getting enough detail about fitness and permanence in both parties, then the chances of getting over problems in marriage would be much greater. The early knowledge and experience gained would stand to their benefit to resolve their difficulties, even if those difficulties came to the question of divorce, where it could be by mutual consent and in harmony rather than the drastic ways in which some marriages end up.
I mentioned looking for permanence before marriage but you can also get fooled. I am not suggesting that if you do this nothing can go wrong. In the pre-marital days if one spouse-to-be wants to capture the other he or she can put on fairly good performances. Many of the old habits are shed because they realise the person they want to tie up just will not wear it. Suddenly they shed these habits during the courting period. After a couple months of marriage the old habits of self-indulgence start once more. Again, we can put it down to some immaturity. Most of us would agree that emotionally mature adults will, in fact, be on the look out for this sort of preliminary assurance and evidence from each other and the ability to be co-operative.
We were talking earlier on about love and marriage. There are many people who are carried away by thoughts of a temporary change and excitement. This is interpreted as love. People who enter marriage on the basis of those feelings enter on the basis of the heart. They never come to realise that it is a heart and brain operation. I do not know whether those particular things can be remedied by having pre-marital courses. That does not mean that you cannot do a great deal in pre-marital courses. I would be an advocate of them. I always have been. In this modern age if you get a lunatic who believes that somebody is fated to met him and that he is going to live happily ever after without knowing very much about her, then I do not think there is much hope for a counselling service or a pre-marriage course.
There is a major role for counselling in many aspects in marriage breakdown. People of immature nature do not pay much attention to the idea that marriage is more giving than taking. They do not realise that it is an attitude in terms of your mate being more precious than yourself. They do not realise that even if they enter into a marriage they have to go about it this way. I would not suggest for one moment that this is an easy thing to achieve, but it is part of adulthood and it is not for the immature. The immature people certainly would not complement each other, which is what marriage is all about. I mean "complement" in the sense of for long term purposes and in the sense of making them more complete people. That is the context in which I made that point. Those who believe in the romantic movie notion and act on that notion are uninformed about the fullest possible meaning of marriage. They will always fall into the trap of opting for change and excitement. They will always go for the temporary whirl. They need a lot of help, guidance and assistance. They are more prone to fall for the glandular excitement, which is a very far distance from working in co-operation and using constructive imagination to build a good marriage. It is certainly a far cry from searching for the fitness and permanence that were referred to earlier on before they make the commitment.
As I mentioned, I do not think there is any such thing as a mate being fated for you. You have to work and build a marriage. You have to understand how adult and mature each partner is before you enter into marriage. I would submit that it is possible to see someone, for example, that would immediately excite you, even to the extent of believing that you could, in fact, say "here is a possible mate". It is known that some perfect marriages result from that. We should be honest with ourselves, and say that whilst it is quite clear that this does happen it is also quite rare. Where it does happen I would suggest that if that does happen the qualities that go to make up a marriage to which we have referred to earlier on in this contribution must have existed in the first place. There is no doubt that they had a blend of values of a physical and mental character, backed up with personality. That is what was there when this particular type of love at first sight lasted. It is obviously there. It was present.
Our difficulty is that we will always have irretrievable breakdown of marriage. Therefore, it is essential to go into it in great depth. It is also essential to have a look at why marriages break down and to try to understand the type of people who are liable to walk into marriage breakdown. Obviously, I cannot cover every one of them. Many other Senators have, in fact, dealt with that. I have to keep emphasising this because I have witnessed so much of it. Naïve people do not understand the gravity of entering into marriage contracts. They are either over-optimistic, or over-trustful. They have no idea of the deadly trap that they can actually fall into. It would be offensive if you said it in another forum on another subject, but their own tender-mindness causes them to tread paths that are treacherous. If they are not treacherous when they set out on them they become treacherous because they have not examined the whole position in detail, as we have explained. What happens when they find themselves in such a situation is that they start stumbling into pits of trouble within the marriage until, finally, the trap they have walked into — a deadly trap — becomes not just a bad marriage but a dungeon. It takes on all the misery that goes with a disturbed mind with nowhere to escape. They cannot isolate themselves or insulate themselves and consequently the mental and physical torture they go through is very disturbing.
Apart from the naïve and those who go overboard on their impulses instead of waiting for more details and confirmation, there are many other reasons for marriages breaking down — some say breaking-up but breaking down is what we are dealing with — which have, as I said, been dealt with by other Senators. It is worth mentioning or repeating what some of them have said, or maybe say, in a different way. We have got to ask ourselves how many irresponsible people of low-grade character of a criminal tendency, who are morally defective and unscrupulous, enter marriages possibly in many cases knowing well that they are going to get the best deal out of them. They can manage to fool the other party for the time being. They are obviously a dead loss. The low-grade character type is a dead loss from the outset. I will not go over the position of people who marry in the first flush of emotions. We have discussed that. There are other types and it is debatable whether, in fact, pre-marital courses could assist them.
I would just make this point about pre-marital courses in the context of trying to get it across that no matter whether you have pre-marital courses, counselling services or anything else the question of marriage irretrievably breaking down is with us. It has been with us and it is going to stay with us. There are others who enter into marriage, who could be described as chronic drifters who do not need any fixed roots. They do not need children because of their particular selfishness. They do not want children. If children arrive, children need roots. Such people do not mind having the pleasure but they do not want the responsibility of children. They have no regard to the roots that the children need. The drifter could not care less. That kind of guy would be very hard to talk to in any pre-marital courses.
There are families who may slave and live in misery for the sake of trying to do something for the children for years on end and not look for an escape, not fully understanding that the possibility is that children might, in fact, be better in a one-parent situation. Getting back to the question of the alcoholics, much has been said about the alcoholic and the compulsive gambler and the misery that he causes the family as a whole. I did not hear all of the debate but I am sure someone dealt with alcoholism. As regards alcoholics, we have the dipsomaniac. I am talking about the guy who indulges in bouts of drinking and then pulls out and tidies himself up and gets right. We would call them controlled alcoholics. When the full responsibility of what they are doing hits those people, they can, in fact, be counselled and brought back from where they have been doing damage in the home. The family can be involved in that counselling service so long as it does not come to the brutality stage where there is beating and hurting of each other, and the desperate burden that it imposes on the children of the marriage. The alcoholic is not necessarily the person who breaks up marriages or deliberately enters into a marriage like the low-bred criminal person I mentioned. The alcoholic may be genuine enough. He just has this particular weakness when the problems get on top of him. The only crutch he has is a few drinks which lead to a lot of trouble. While it is not the main cause of marriage breakdown, it does lead to a breakdown in marriage.
On the other side, nobody speaks about a lot of people pursuing careers at the expense of marriage and this can cause their marriages to get into trouble. I do not think we have to go any further than lifting the papers and reading about the types of people in this area who manage to get divorces as a result of this belief that their careers are much more important than their marriages. Despite the ability of a person who might be money-conscious, he or she can, in fact, be immature when it comes to the question of understanding what marriage is about.
I have been trying to show causes as to why some marriages had little hope from the start. The dreams, ideals and romantic hopes about marriage are never enough to make a marriage. Even if you cut those romantic ideals, dreams and hopes down to size, a lot of work still remains to fix the marriage. A marriage is not going to succeed just because you start doing a bit of tailoring. I am sure some people will understand from what I have been saying that my concern is with preparation for marriage. If we examine this we can help people to avoid the likely pitfalls. As I said no matter what pre-marital courses you have or what advice is available, there are certain types of people you just cannot help. They just drift into marriage and cause marriage breakdown and so on.
What are we going to do about this and how are we going to approach it in order to see if such a marriage can be rescued. There are certain types of people whom you will not reach. There are many people that you can reach in a pre-marital way. The irresponsible will be irresponsible. They will not be able, and will not want, to deal with the double-edged factor. You can have one naïve person and one irresponsible person entering into a marriage. That is the downfall of both people.
I do not think our problem in tackling this debate is just the fact of divorce. Neither is it the fact of equipping people or teaching people to equip themselves for marriage. Before divorce became a reality or popular in England, America or anywhere else, I would like to know how many marriages had broken down? Marriage breakdown existed then. It existed after divorce was introduced. No end of counselling or pre-marital education can take this kind of factor out of our consideration. The pre-marital courses serve people well. I know many people who have benefited extensively from them. It is a pleasure to look at how the marriages are working out. I am merely talking about the person you just cannot reach. When you cannot get to someone you have to deal then with the inevitable consequences of a marriage that is breaking down. I am not interested in the one that is not irretrievably broken down, but the one that is actually breaking down, to see if something can be done about it. I would have to emphasise the causes of marriage irretrievably breaking down. Where that happens there is only the one way to let people out of their misery.
The naïve, chronic alcoholic and the compulsive gambler are with us. They are going to be with us for a long time. Despite our own best intentions to play some part in trying to help people as a whole, we are on to a loser in certain situations of trying to stop marriage from irretrievably breaking down. On the logic of that, you can only come to one conclusion. There is the conclusion by some people that divorce is not the answer. There is the conclusion, on the other hand, where a marriage breaks down irretrievably that divorce is the answer. There is a conflict of two conclusions. One of those has got to be resolved. It can only be resolved by giving the people the right by referendum to change the article of the Constitution that prohibits divorce. In this way one of the conclusions would be resolved. As long as nothing is done in this regard the conflict will remain. We should do this as soon as possible to give people a second chance. To do nothing about giving people a second chance would be to declare ourselves in favour of the wrongs and injustices we very often scream out about in other areas. The public would be entitled to look upon us as regarding it as none of our business. We live in the world of reality. Irretrievable marriage breakdown exists. The only remedy is to allow a situation which will give the parties to those marriages second chance for happiness.
In all societies, American, English etc. there is a large amount of self-deception, evil, roguery, low-level emotion, greed, fear, self-seeking, prejudice, suspicion, anger, hate, jealousy, envy and animosity. With such a mixed-bag society we should stop fooling ourselves that we will not run into the situation where irretrievable marriage breakdown occurs if we take certain courses of action such as good family courts, pre-marital courses, sex education and good counselling services. Obviously, there are many just, honourable and good people who enter into adult marriages which are very stable and good, but if you look at the various categories of people I have quoted it is reasonable to argue that most of these people will end up trapping either themselves or their partners in a dungeon-like situation, if they enter into the married state. I do not use the word "dungeon" lightly. The mental and physical torment, stress and anxiety give the people concerned the feeling of being enclosed in a dungeon.
Last week, I quoted from a poem I wrote myself about the South African situation. I would now like to quote from another poem I wrote. I cannot remember it all, but one line from it was "I did not hear the sentence passed". It is about somebody who is walking amid society. Everything is happening all around him. Buses are passing by him and trains are running overhead but he is trapped within his own mind through his marital problems and difficulties and he just did not hear the sentence passed. I will probably use the full text of that poem on another occasion.
With such a mixed-bag society you cannot trust people to be completely unselfish and dedicated to good, honourable conduct. To try to do so would be to suggest that in Ireland, as distinct from everywhere else, all our people are to be trusted to be completely unselfish, dedicated and honourable. We are fooling ourselves if we think we in Ireland are any different from people anywhere else. It is worth mentioning that within our society as within all other societies there is friendliness, love, justice, courage, sympathy, social concern and responsibility. Generally speaking, there is constructive help available within the nation. But on balance, with the percentage of the other types I have mentioned, marriage breakdown is likely. While there is a higher percentage of people who want love and justice and who are willing to be helpful and co-operative, there still exists a high percentage of the other types I have mentioned.
Therein lies the problem. With such a high percentage of these people society will suffer. Many people will, therefore, become victims of the destructive side of the marriages entered into by these people. The victims of these marriages have to be treated justly. Whatever action is necessary has to be taken. A marriage which has irretrievably broken down has to be cancelled legally. As legislators we cannot stand by and watch the vilest acts of cruelty and unparalleled calamities being imposed on any of our citizens. As I said earlier, we cry out very loudly about civil liberties being denied to other sections of society. We also take to the streets on many occasions over denial of civil liberties and injustice in foreign lands. We are right to do so. On the issue of divorce we have a strong case for a civil liberty to be conceded. The victims of bad marriages are trapped and on the brink of despair. They feel themselves to be in a dungeon-like situation where a sentence has been passed upon them which they did not hear.
Dialogue on the issue of divorce has been very substantial. By the time the debate on this issue has been completed in the Dáil everybody should have a good grasp of the pros and cons of the situation. I do not think we will have any complaints and therefore the referendum on the removal of the prohibition of divorce in the Constitution must be undertaken within the lifetime of this Dáil. To get justice done we must be consistent. When we are crying out loud for other people we must also cry out very loud for the people in marriages that have irretrievably broken down. We must cry out loud to have their misery ended.
On this very emotive subject I do not think we should let our feelings run too far with the belief that divorce will somehow solve all of the problems arising out of broken marriages — I made that point earlier on — or that we can, by granting divorce, do away with the causes, because the granting of divorce merely deals with the effects of a cause and not the cause itself. Quite frankly, having regard to the category of people that I mentioned who enter into marriages and what motivates them, I do not know whether in fact the cause can be got at. With the right structures and advice available, the right education, not only of the young people who may marry but of their parents, entering into marriage can become much more deliberate and considered. There will be more emphasis on what is needed in the marriage.
Those about to undertake it if they are not mature enough, can, through a friend or a parent, be influenced to wait until such time as they understand all the supplications. I think it would be difficulut to persuade certain naive types to do that — the rogue, the chronic drifter, the low grade guy with the low grade morals, the criminal, the guy who just wants to trap someone anyway. I am not terribly optimistic about it overall but a lot can be done to give a greater understanding of what marriage is all about, what the effects are of entering into a marriage, the results it might bring and how it can bring people to the brink of despair. That can be got across but I do not think all of the causes of breakdown can be dealt with. With proper premarital courses, with proper counselling services etc., the problems overall can be made less acute.
When I say that, I am not backing off from the idea that if divorce is granted it will push the figures up a bit. I have conceded that point; but I have also explained that divorce is not caused by divorce, that it is merely the legal ending of a contract — the makings of the divorce would have been there anyway. If you add that to the arguments of the people who are naïve and the romantic and the simpletons who enter into marriage you can see that trying to prevent irretrievable breakdown in marriage, while it is a very noble and very good goal, is going to be very difficult indeed to achieve. We certainly will not escape having to live with the idea. Therefore, we must think of a referendum as soon as possible.
Why the referendum? Quite frankly, if people are in misery it seems to me that the only thing that is available at the moment to rescue people from the chronic misery they are going through is the prospect of using the referendum as a starting point. The situation will not cure itself, despite all the compassion and understanding and the concern clearly to state the problem by people of all parties. In my view, a good starting point, having regard to the amount of dialogue that has gone on, the agitation that has been going on for some years, and the dialogue that is about to come, is the referendum, because all other things will run along side that and can be put into place.
In the political arena I know I use some emotional terms myself but I do not think I have got into a way that I sort of let my passions control myself: I do not think that is a good way to make law. In fairness to most of the Senators who contributed, they did not do that either. Like myself they realise that there is too much at stake in this issue. Either side, for or against, might lose as a result of a referendum but I do not think that that should be a consideration, if it is held in the lifetime of this Dáil. We are not talking about a winning and losing situation; we are talking about the question of trying to do something about the terrible state of marriages in a substantial number of cases. I believe the referendum idea is good. It is a starting point. I think it has to be seen that the compassion and understanding of the Dáil are there and that other things would go along with it, such as dealing with family law and family courts, counselling services and advice, etc. That would all run together.
Even if the advocates of divorce happen to lose out I do not think a lot would have been done to hurt their cause because the whole debate would be still open. It would have taken a very substantial jump forward. I would want to see the referendum winning — I do not mean in a winning sense but in the sense that it would release people who are living in this terrible hell and give them another chance of happiness. No citizen should be denied that.
I do not want to be too critical in making this statement. There are self-evident facts on occasions when we are debating things in this House, particularly emotional things, where the clergy might become involved, where we are a bit concerned about our own particular constituency and how the people react or think in the area. We are inclined not to want to admit to statements of truth that offend the sympathies of constituents or inhibit what is perhaps the hatred that exists in some of us. I cannot judge myself: somebody else will have to do that. I may be guilty in this respect but we often force ourselves to deny the evidence, hoping to deceive others regarding it. In a very critical situation like this that is not the way to behave. The Seanad have given the lead in this respect and we have not seen much evidence of such behaviour. I am glad of that. I trust that it will not enter into the situation in the Dáil and that we will get a clear understanding of the position and will be able to put it to an early referendum.
I dealt with the question of the two causes. You cannot adopt one while the two exist and so we must have the referenda to deal with the two conclusions that cause conflict. The more we "hunk-er-slide" on this question the more wilful blindness will be evinced. There will be a lot of pride tending to conceal facts which are with us and will be with us. I know of one or two people who would be prepared to live in the agony of doubt rather than look this misfortune of marriage breakdown right in the face. Maybe that sounds a little harsh but I suspect there are one or two people who will take that road.
We are dealing with a misfortune that may be someone else's but we must face it and even if the least happy outcome emerges — according to my thinking being in favour of an early referendum and hoping that it will succeed in removing the constitutional lien — and the Irish people decide that divorce is not on, I would be prepared to see that possibility as I am now. I am prepared to support the consequences. Most people who are making similar arguments would think along the same line.
I wish to refer to the Labour Party in so far as the whole question of our consistency on this issue of divorce is concerned. I mentioned earlier that in the mid-seventies the Labour Party took a position on the question of marital breakdown for a variety of reasons, pluralism, social grounds and in response to the real conditions of a social kind which existed because they were making it unhelpful to have a constitutional prohibition on divorce. It was never suggested by the Labour Party that the removal of the constitutional prohibition on divorce would lead to a solution of the problems where other remedies would be more appropriate. Dr. Browne, when he was a Member of this House, made the point that the rights of the minority should not depend on the size of that minority but rather that rights have a validity of their own. The right to dissolve a broken marriage is a fundamental right, he held, especially when the parties involved are suffering intolerable hardship and stress and bringing what would appear to be unnecessary strain on any children of that marriage. It has become an accepted fact in society and, indeed, in political circles, that the changing role of women in society, coupled with new stresses due to economic depression, have lead to an increase in the breakdown of marriages. Then he went on to quote an ESRI survey showing that over 50 per cent of the population favoured some form of divorce laws. As far as I am aware, that statement was made in 1983 by Dr. Noel Browne.
Senator Michael Higgins, speaking in the Seanad said that the first point he wanted to make perfectly clear was the position of the Labour Party in policy terms. He said:
In the mid-seventies the Labour Party, not capriciously, but after a great deal of consideration decided overwhelmingly at their conference that they were in favour of the removal of the constitutional ban on divorce. That is the position of the Labour Party.
The significance of these points made by Senator Michael Higgins is that they spell out quite clearly that the Labour Party supported the removal of the constitutional prohibition on divorce since the early seventies. They took this stand because they believed in a pluralistic State which would respect the views of all its Churches and, indeed, because as a socialist party they respected the rights of individuals to make adult decisions about their private lives and seek legislative redress from a marriage which had broken down.
This decision was not made quickly or without due consideration of the complexities of the matter, but rather after much discussion and careful examination of (a) social pressures which lead to marital breakdown and (b) the stresses and intolerable hardship which families had to endure once a marriage had broken down. The Labour Party did not view marital breakdown in isolation but as one of the greatest problems facing our society not in the eighties but going back to the early and mid-seventies and it was against this background that they brought the motion on divorce to their annual conference where Labour Party Deputies voted overwhelmingly in favour of the removal of the constitutional ban on divorce.
Here we have a situation where the Labour Party have been the advocates of dealing with this whole question of marriage breakdown. They did not confine themselves to the breakdown of marriage at their conference, as might be taken from those particular quotations I have made from Senator Michael Higgins and former Deputy Noel Browne at that time. Anybody who cares to examine Labour Party policy on social matters will find that the whole question of family law and such areas are well documented and are updated from time to time in accordance with the developments that are taking place in society.
I would like to remind the Seanad that in 1983 in the Seanad Senator Michael Higgins stressed:
The people have now indicated in the polls that they—
— this was after a poll had been taken —
— want a referendum on divorce. Indeed, one might add that if a small unrepresentative group of people can approach the leaders of the main political parties and get a commitment to hold a referendum on abortion, when there appears to be no need for one, why must there be such long and arduous debate on a referendum on divorce? The opportunism of the main political parties in giving their commitment for the previous referendum may be pointed out. The Labour Party will be anxious that the question of divorce, which is a painful and stressful experience for adults whose marriage has broken down, must not become the matter of similar opportunism.
That is a quotation from Senator Michael Higgins and I do not go along with the total context in which he put that particular quotation. The question of the referendum on abortion was somewhat different from this. The social implications are of a different variety and need much more depth of understanding from the broader point of view of the population as a whole.
I am not saying what he said there is dead accurate but I am quoting it as an indication that this is nothing new to the Labour Party. We have been advocating it for a long long time. I do not see that the situation of the institution of marriage would be in any way affected by the removal of the ban on divorce by an amendment of the Constitution. It is incorrect to link divorce with a lot of social indicators because I do not think in the course of the debate, or even in the report, that we have proved a great deal. There are many social indicators that have not been tested and have not been proved. They are never proved, if you like, from the point of view of saying the availability of divorce would have a certain effect.
Our position is that we hear the figures that are bandied about: I do not know how accurate they are and I am not trying to argue that they are accurate, but we are talking about 70,000 adults, or so it is alleged, who are insisting on the removal of the consitutional prohibition on divorce. The 70,000 would not be the influencing factor in my mind. I do not know what the real figure is: I know it is a substantial figure. Let me be quite clear that if it was 10,000 or 11,000 or 12,000 my argument would not be much different. We are talking about a civil right for a minority that are being denied it and the principle of giving that civil right does not, in my view, become less in value if the minority is 10,000 rather than 70,000. I am not making the 70,000 as the strong argument, rather the principle.
We have heard arguments about the irrevocable effect that divorce has on the family. Again, there does not seem to be any real, certified evidence that divorce does any greater harm than trying to keep a very unhappy marriage together. It could not do any more harm than that. I have not got access to very many reports. The matter has been covered here in the Seanad and I am sure there are many reports that could be produced to show that severe damage has been done to children where people have fought in front of them and have insisted on sticking together. Evidence of violence in the home is there also and I am sure there are reports about it. My limited knowledge comes from looking at British television on which we have seen some very interesting programmes on this whole question of violence in the home. If there is evidence of it in this country I am sure our sociologists have got hold of it and when I get time to read all of the debate it is likely that I will find some evidence in it that the violence alone is not something that is transmitted from family to family in each generation. People have claimed that if the father was violent the son will be violent and his marriage would be affected by it. There does not seem to be any real evidence about that.
The question of what impact the children have on violence in the home and what stresses and anxieties the children take out on the parents also arises. Again I would like to see some evidence on that and the role it might play in bringing a marriage to the point of irretrievable breakdown.
I would like to quote Senator Robinson now. She said:
The present law in this area is a disgrace. As legislators, we can only be ashamed of our lack of attention on this issue. The law in the broad sense, our family law, because of the absence of proper procedures and mechanisms, proper supports and preventive measures and also the absence of a legal remedy for a breakdown of marriage which enables the parties to enter into a second-stage relation, is indefensible, discriminatory and oppressive. It has been said, and it is true, that our family law, including our matrimonial law has now become the most complex in the world because we do not have any straightforward legal remedy to terminate a marriage relationship which is totally broken down. We have very complex partial remedies and links between relationships and remedies which try to meet the complexity of human relations. It is only lawyers, social welfare officers, judges and people involved on the front line who realise how complex ordinary people's relationships can be and how oppressive it is when on top of a considerable degree of human pain and suffering one adds the oppression of stupid, inflexible, rigid, uncaring, unfeeling and out of date laws. The basic law in relation to legal separation dates from 1870. It is 113 years old and it is totally inadequate. It is a totally inadequate response to the problem of marriage breakdown and so are all the other remedies that are being referred to."
Again, in this quotation I am not necessarily supporting Senator Robinson to the fullest extent that the only people that know all about the problems are lawyers or barristers. If you come through life and have been dealing with problems of people over a substantial number of years you may not grasp the legal implications but certainly you will not lack the social concern nor will you lack the understanding that they need help. You may, however, find a difficulty in trying to get the type of help they need but certainly I do not think it is the privilege of lawyers or anyone else to understand these problems. This debate has shown that quite clearly. When we get into the Dáil probably the stockbroker will be as good as the lawyer when it comes down to cases.
