The debate will conclude after three hours if not previously concluded. As this is a Bill to amend the Constitution, in accordance with precedent and Standing Order 152, the Schedule to the Bill will be taken out of sequence, given that it contains substantive elements of the proposed amendment to the Constitution. The proposed sequence of the elements of the Bill is as follows: section 1, Schedule, section 2, Preamble and Title. Accordingly, immediately following the disposal of the first section of the Bill, I will ask the Leader to formally move that consideration of section 2 be postponed until the Schedule shall have been disposed of.
Thirty-ninth Amendment of the Constitution (The Family) Bill 2023: Committee and Remaining Stages
ALT 1
SECTION 1
Amendment No. 1 has been ruled out of order, in accordance with Article 40.6.2° of the Constitution. Amendment No. 2 has been ruled out of order because it is in conflict with the principle of the Bill as read a Second Time.
Níor tairgeadh leasuithe Uimh. 1 agus 2.
Amendments Nos. 1 and 2 not moved.
Amendments Nos. 3 to 9, inclusive, are related.
Are you suggesting that amendments Nos. 3 to 9, inclusive, should be debated together, Acting Chair?
That is fine. I just want to be clear about that.
Is that agreed? Agreed.
Tairgim leasú a 3:
I leathanach 4, línte 11 go 14 a scriosadh agus an méid seo a leanas a chur ina n-ionad:
“(a) in subsection 1° of section 3 of the Irish text, by the deletion of “Ós ar an bPósadh atá an Teaghlach bunaithe gabhann” and the substitution of “Gabhann”;
(b) in subsection 1° of section 3 of the English text, by the deletion of “, on which the Family is founded;”,
agus
I leathanach 5, línte 12 go 15 a scriosadh agus an méid seo a leanas a chur ina n-ionad:
“(a) o-alt 1° d’alt 3 den téacs Gaeilge, trí “Ós ar an bPósadh atá an Teaghlach bunaithe gabhann’ a scriosadh agus ‘Gabhann” a chur ina ionad;
(b) i bhfo-alt 1° d’alt 3 den téacs Sacs-Bhéarla, trí “, on which the Family is founded,” a scriosadh;”.
I move amendment No. 3:
In page 4, to delete lines 11 to 14 and substitute the following:
“(a) in subsection 1° of section 3 of the Irish text, by the deletion of “Ós ar an bPósadh atá an Teaghlach bunaithe gabhann” and the substitution of “Gabhann”;
(b) in subsection 1° of section 3 of the English text, by the deletion of “, on which the Family is founded;”,
and
In page 5, to delete lines 12 to 15 and substitute the following:
“(a) i bhfo-alt 1° d’alt 3 den téacs Gaeilge, trí “Ós ar an bPósadh atá an Teaghlach bunaithe gabhann” a scriosadh agus “Gabhann” a chur ina ionad;
(b) i bhfo-alt 1° d’alt 3 den téacs Sacs-Bhéarla, trí “, on which the Family is founded,” a scriosadh;”.
If it is all right I will remain seated because I cannot stand.
That is fine.
I feel like I have to explain that every time I speak here. As my Labour Party colleagues and I said yesterday, we welcome the proposed changes to the definition of "family" in Bunreacht na hÉireann. If it is all right, I would like to take a moment to make the connection here and to applaud the ruling in the Supreme Court case yesterday, and to thank Johnny O'Meara for taking the case. I also thank Treoir and FLAC for their involvement. It is a moment of real significance in the State's history. We now call on the Minister with responsibility to immediately act on the judgment.
I believe that these two issues are linked together and they were referenced in the case. It appears that the argument is all the stronger now for the constitutional broadening of the definition of a family to include all durable relationships. We cannot leave it to chance that there will be some other part of the social welfare or tax codes that will require somebody to go to court to prove their family rights. We must recognise the treatment legacy within the State of families who do not conform to this constitutional model. That is what our amendment is about, namely, the model of a family based on marriage. It is the opinion of many that the definition of Article 41 in no way reflects the current and wonderful diversity of family life in Ireland. The wording that we have been presented by the Government speaks of "durable relationships". The Minister has spoken on this before, but the question still remains as to what is "durability" and what defines a "durable relationship" between adults. We very much believe that the definition must include comfort for cohabiting couples and those both with and without children, and it must also address issues for disabled people in the area of kinship for carers. The Committee Stage amendment we tabled states:
In page 4, to delete lines 11 to 14 and substitute the following:
“(a) in subsection 1° of section 3 of the Irish text, by the deletion of “Ós ar an bPósadh atá an Teaghlach bunaithe gabhann” and the substitution of “Gabhann”;
(b) in subsection 1° of section 3 of the English text, by the deletion of “, on which the Family is founded;”,
I urge other Senators to support this amendment, which will simply remove the phrase "on which the Family is founded" from Bunreacht na hÉireann and remove the constitutional concept that a family is confined only to those based on marriage and it would expand that definition. We cannot overestimate the hurt that has been inflicted on individuals and families for decades because they did not conform to that very narrow definition of a family based on marriage. This is personal for many people, including thousands of women who found themselves pregnant and parented alone; women who were abandoned by the fathers of their children and left to parent alone; and men who raised children on their own; as well as grandparents and those who choose to have children on their own. There are loads of other different types of families in this country. I and the Labour Party think the symbolism of change in this Constitution would have a profound impact on those families, as they would feel recognised.
These amendments, as the Acting Chair has pointed out, all relate to the same basic matter, which is what precisely is to be inserted into the Constitution, consistent with the overall scheme of the proposed amendment.
Yesterday, we had a somewhat fraught discussion in which some people said that their own arrangements were under attack by anybody who opposed the making of this amendment. Nothing could be further from the truth. I fully respect the personal lives and arrangements that everybody in this House has made. Nothing I say is intended to cause any offence or hurt to anybody. I would not do so willingly, and I do not think I am doing so at all.
I was interested in what Senator Hoey said about the O'Meara case. The argument was made that the O'Meara case strengthens the need for this constitutional amendment. For my part, I take the exact opposite view. In my view the O'Meara case, which was decided yesterday, demonstrates the absence of a need for the amendment with which we are dealing.
First, we should remember that the majority decision in the O'Meara case upholds the proposition that the family under the Constitution is based on marriage. That is what the decision of Mr. Justice O'Donnell and his colleagues upholds, and it is the majority decision. Mr. Justice O'Donnell says that is the plain meaning of the existing Constitution, so we start from that point.
Even though the Constitution states that the family is based on marriage and even though the majority in O'Meara case proceeded on the basis that was the Constitution, and the clear meaning of the Constitution, the Supreme Court nonetheless looked to the situation of the O'Meara family and concluded that the provisions of the social welfare legislation in respect of the widow's and widower's pension arrangements were unconstitutional insofar as they infringed the equality rights of Mr. O'Meara and his children under the Constitution, holding that their social need, looked at objectively, was indistinguishable from the social need of somebody in his position who had married the children's late mother. It seems to me on that account that the O'Meara decision shows two things. It puts the ball in the Government's court to bring in legislation amending the Social Welfare Acts to provide for people in the O'Meara situation.
It also states for the first time that the special position of marriage in the Constitution does not warrant an invidious discrimination against persons who are in a domestic situation indistinguishable except for the fact of marriage from people who are married. The present wording of the Constitution does not in any shape or form prevent this House from passing the legislation that will be necessary, consequent on the Supreme Court's decision. The majority in the Supreme Court has explicitly held that the present provisions in the Constitution do not prevent this House from doing justice to the O'Meara family. It is important to grasp that point. People might have thought the injustice was incapable of being remedied because of the special position of the family based on marriage. The truth is the opposite. Nothing in the Constitution at the moment prevents the Oireachtas from enacting social welfare laws that are just not discriminatory to people who are in domestic situations that are differentiated by the fact there is not a marriage underlying them. The argument that being fair and equitable to the O'Meara family and people in their position somehow depends on changing the Constitution simply does not stand up. On the contrary, the majority decision indicates clearly that notwithstanding the family, for constitutional purposes, continues to be based on marriage, it is not merely the right of the Legislature to do justice to the O'Meara family, it is its constitutional duty to do so.
From that point of view, one has to ask oneself what are the other implications of the O'Meara decision. One of them, for instance, is that, as mentioned by Senator Hoey, there are knock-on consequences - and one does not need a degree in law, jurisprudence or anything else to see this - for the taxation system. If somebody in Mr. O'Meara's position can point to a family based on matrimony and say that such families are given an income tax regime that is far more favourable than his situation, being a single father with dependent children, any resourceful lawyers on his part will go back to 1980 and look at the Murphy decision and ask what the criteria are that state the O'Meara family must have a much heavier burden of taxation than it would if Mr. O'Meara had been able to marry his partner before her unfortunate death. It seems to follow that there will inevitably be challenges to the existing tax regime arising from the O'Meara decision. That is something we are not discussing today, in one sense, but it will happen. It is coming down the litigation tracks that people will look at the O'Meara case. It is bound to lead to other challenges not merely in the welfare code but also in the taxation code. Why should Mr. O'Meara and his children carry a much heavier tax burden than they would have done if he had been in a position to marry, and had married, his partner before her death? How can it be justified that he is in a position radically different from a taxpayer in a similar situation who did marry the mother of his or her children even after they were born? That is the first thing. A challenge is coming to our taxation system.
If we change the definition of the "family" to include other durable relations, parties to those other durable relations will have at least as strong a case as the O'Mearas to challenge the constitutionality of what they will allege are the unfair and discriminatory tax provisions that apply to them. It will, therefore, become a matter of considerable importance, socially and for a whole series of other reasons, what is or is not considered a durable relationship for the purposes of the Constitution if this amendment is made. As night follows day, parties who think they are in a durable relationship will challenge the tax code and changes will have to be made to accommodate them. That raises the issue the amendment in my name seeks to deal with fairly and squarely. Who defines a "durable relationship"? Is it this House and the Dáil? Do we have the right to say a relationship must have lasted at least two years or that it must at least have had a conjugal aspect to it?
With regard to cohabitation as recognised in law, the courts have held that the term "intimate", when used in the definition of a cohabiting couple, refers to a sexual relationship between them. Do we decide that or do we leave it to the courts to decide that in any individual case? There is nothing to stop us. The 2010 legislation deals with cohabitation and civil partnerships but I am more concerned now with cohabitation because civil partnerships are effectively historical because of the passage of the marriage equality referendum. If we concern ourselves with the legislation relating to cohabitation, anybody who looks at that legislation will see that the criteria for recognition are determined by the two Houses of the Oireachtas. It is not up to a court to say that they are cohabiting and it is holding that they are cohabiting. The Houses of the Oireachtas have, by the terms of the 2010 Act, told the courts what is and, much more importantly, what is not cohabitation for the purposes of that statute.
The Minister has been frank enough in his informal briefings with the leader of my group to indicate that it is a deliberate choice on the part of the Government, in its phraseology of its proposed amendment, to leave the definition of "durable relationship" to be decided on by the courts. I ask in that context why we did not do that with cohabitation rights. The courts are unelected and, once they decide something, one cannot reverse out of it. If the Supreme Court says it means a certain thing, it means that certain thing because it is in the Constitution. If that is to be the means by which one determines what is or is not a durable relationship, why did we bother, with cohabitation rights, to set out all the criteria about who is and who is not entitled to be regarded in law as a party to cohabitation? In the 2010 Act, we see the people who are not entitled to it. They are people who are parties to marriages and would be excluded by consanguinity rules from having their relationship recognised. All of those things are provided for in law. Much more than that is provided in law. The entitlement of cohabitants, in the event of the termination of the relationship, to seek from each other assistance in the form of financial support and the like, and the division of property, is very strictly limited. The mere fact that one has cohabited, unless one satisfies the criteria laid down in that Act, does not entitle one to invoke the provisions of the 2010 Act.
My amendment proposes two things. One is that an enduring relationship would have to be one that was between two persons. It could be parent-child, but it would at least have to be between two persons. It would also have to be as prescribed by law, so that these Houses could say that six months together is not enough, or that three years together is enough, and, much more importantly, that the presence or absence of children, which is one of the criteria under the 2010 Act for recognising cohabitation, is or is not to be a criterion in determining what a durable relationship is. If two people move in together for a number of years - while I do not claim to be a family law expert, I was reading the case law today in Family Law in Context, which deals with this in great detail - case law clearly lays down the criteria and factors that, by statute, a court is obliged to consider in deciding that people are cohabitants for the purpose of deciding whether they have any remedy against each other in the event of their relationship breaking up. All of that will be swept away by this amendment because, in future, presumably, the average cohabitant will be deemed to be a party to a durable relationship. The right of the Oireachtas to say these are the criteria by which a court must judge the matter is not recognised in the Government's proposed amendment. That is a serious matter.
For instance, let us pose this question to ourselves. If a durable relationship does not necessarily involve having children, and I presume from everything that has been said here that it does not, does the fact that there are children in any particular case lend weight to the entitlement of people to have their relationship be considered durable? Are the courts free to define a durable relationship without regard to whether children are or are not present as a result of the relationship? When I say, "as a result of the relationship," I am sure there are many cases where effectively stepparents move in to a situation where children are not their own natural children but they are nonetheless something that the court might take into account in determining whether this was to be defined as cohabitation for the purpose of the 2010 Act.
The point that I make is this: how does it make any sense to take away from the Houses of the Oireachtas the right to set out the criteria for recognition? We can do it and if we get it wrong, we can change it. If we did so in an impermissible way, the Supreme Court could tell us we had done it in an impermissible way. If we actually say that it is entirely a matter for the courts to decide and not a matter for the Oireachtas to prescribe, we are in fact robbing ourselves of flexibility in this area.
I will give two examples that may be of interest to some people. Cohabitants can obviously end their relationship in various ways. One way can be where one party to the cohabitation unilaterally decides to end it and to move out. There is a difference between that and separation and divorce because the marriage that exists in a married situation subsists and the duties, obligations, and entitlements under it all subsist after one party moves out of the marriage home.
If there is a divorce or separation, under the family law legislation that we have at the moment it is open to a court, in the interests of the children or, to use a phrase that is possibly a bit old-fashioned, the abandoned spouse, or person left by the other partner to divide the assets of both parties to the marriage so as to provide for partner or offspring of a marriage. Before any divorce is permissible and before a marriage ends under the Constitution, as it is currently framed, provides that a court must ensure that there has been adequate provision for the children of the marriage. If somebody wants, perhaps for good reason, to remarry a different person they will not get the right to remarry unless they ensure that the partner and children, if there are such, of the first marriage have been adequately provided for.
That does not exist in cohabitation. People can move out of one home and into another. In fact, one can move out of a home and marry, having cohabited. There is no impediment to a person forming a marriage and becoming a constitutionally recognised party to a marriage arising simply from the fact that one has previously cohabited with somebody else. This is serious stuff.
If we say that people can, in effect, move in and out of durable relationships and form new ones without providing for the offspring of their first marriage, which is required by the Constitution, we are in fact saying something very serious and fundamental about family breakdown, its consequences and the behaviour of parties to unhappy marriages who may wish to find a happy marriage for themselves. A cohabitant is under no inhibition from moving out and marrying another marriageable person and forming a constitutionally recognised partnership with that person, as things stand.
All of those things are important from the point of view of protecting people who are party to relationships, whether they are called durable, fleeting, semi-durable, short-term or whatever. If a man and a woman cohabit and there is a child, there is no inhibition on the man marrying another woman as there would be if he was originally married to the first mother of his child where he would have to, as a precondition to marrying again, establish that he had properly looked after the parties to his first marriage. We are getting rid of that.
We are saying that durable relations are to be given the same status as a family based on marriage. The provisions of the Constitution which refer to divorce and the precondition of looking after the people in the first marriage before one embarks on a second constitutionally recognised marriage become awfully redundant if people do not get married in the first place. If I do not marry a woman and have two children with her in a three to five-year relationship, I am free and not bound by the provisions of the Constitution which say that I cannot marry a different woman and start a family which is recognised under the Constitution as a constitutional family.
If I had to divorce in order to form a second constitutionally recognised marriage, I would have to prove to a court that I had made proper provision for the children of the first marriage. Nobody should try to paper this over. This is a fundamental consequence of what we are doing. It is important that we look at the Constitution. We are leaving in it the provision that the State pledges to guard with special care the institution of marriage and to protect it against attack. That does not deal with the situation I am talking about because such a person was not party to a marriage. We are leaving in the Constitution the second section part of that section of the Constitution which states that:
A Court designated by law may grant a dissolution of marriage where, but only where, it is satisfied that –
i there is no reasonable prospect of a reconciliation between the spouses,
ii such provision as the Court considers proper having regard to the circumstances exists or will be made for the spouses, any children of either or both of them and any other person prescribed by law, and
iii any further conditions prescribed by law are complied with.
That is what we say about marriages. This House has kept control of the circumstances in which a marriage can be terminated. One of them is if and only if a person satisfies the court that he or she has looked after the parties to the first marriage can that person have a marriage dissolved so as to enable him or her to establish a second constitutionally recognised family. We are scrapping that for non-marital durable relationships.
We are saying that the only people to whom this will apply are people who got married in the first place. They are the only people who will have to get divorced. They are the only people who will have to satisfy a court that they have looked after the parties to the first marriage and their offspring in a manner that the court considers satisfactory. A party to a durable relationship can walk out the door and marry a man or woman within six months, as one has to give notice. That is about it. People can marry because they are free to marry.
There is no point in pretending we are not doing this because people are not reading this Constitution. Durable relationships will not be covered by the provisions relating to the dissolution of a marriage. The dissolution of a durable relationship will not be provided for in law. The duties of somebody to tidy up the situation they are leaving and provide for all of the people adequately out of their means will not exist as an obstacle to forming a second constitutionally recognised family and becoming a party to it. We cannot cod ourselves as to what we are doing.
I had an uncle who tried to persuade me years ago that there should be no reference at all in the Constitution to marriage, and that it should be left to churches and people who want to enter into legal deeds or whatever they wanted to do. He wanted to take it all out of the Constitution. We are leaving in the Constitution very serious obstacles to the dissolution of a family relationship based on marriage. We are saying that will not apply to durable relationships.
In the period since I was Minister for Justice, I did one family law case and I regretted it instantly because it is the toughest law you can do. It is the most harrowing, the most difficult and the most important to the people involved, but it takes it out of you. I think Senator Martin will agree with me on that.
If you can avoid being involved in family law and make a few shillings as a barrister, you are well off. I admire family lawyers hugely. Family lawyers will tell you, for instance, that farmers - and I have seen it - with 300 acres have been told that they must set aside 150 acres for their spouse and children for the proper provision of the children. The property of the family and shares in businesses are frequently divided between parties separating or divorcing couples. As I read in family law books, it only happens in cohabitation cases in respect of shared property in which they have resided, but neither party effectively gets their hands on half of the other party’s private wealth. However, we are going for that. If this happens, people who are not married will, on O’Meara’s logic and on the fact that their relationship has the same status in law as a family based on marriage, I think be entitled to ask for a share in the other partner’s private wealth. I am not trying to run scare stories here but I have seen a farm being physically divided. That is what we are dealing with in family law as it exists at the moment because you have to go to court to get your marriage dissolved and prove that you have done the needful by your spouse and children before the marriage will be dissolved. However, none of that will exist if we go down this road.
I do not see what was wrong in the 2010 Act, which provided criteria for recognising cohabitation, as determined by these Houses, as to who is and is not to be regarded as a cohabitant, what a court is or is not obliged to take into account and what a court should not take into a count. Why is that not to be provided for by law in the case of a durable relationship when it is already provided in respect of family law separations and divorces where the family is based on marriage?
I find a huge lacuna - a gaping hole - in saying that the Oireachtas will not have a function in determining what a durable relationship is but the courts will ultimately decide that. We are effectively handing over an essentially legislative power to the Judiciary. Is six months enough? Is nine months enough? Does it depend on the judge’s attitude to the two people that he or she sees before them before they are recognised as a family? That is without even considering the question of a break-up of a durable relationship. Who is to be recognised and who is not? These Houses provided in a liberal and an imaginative way for cohabitants to be protected but said that if we are going to do that, we will remain the masters of who is entitled to all of these privileges, rights and duties in respect of each other arising out of cohabitation. However, we are not doing that now.
I will make a second point arising out of yesterday’s discussion. Some people said that the points I made, I presume in an article in The Irish Times because they were speaking before I spoke, were disgusting in that I was relegating what are obviously family relations in a colloquial sense to a two-tier hierarchy where some of them are given recognition and others are not. All I can say about that is if we are going to have protection of the family and the institution of marriage with special care and protection from attack for it, why are we not doing that for durable relations? Sometimes I am reminded of Woody Allen’s phrase that if marriage is an institution, I am not keen on it - who wants to live in an institution? However, if you call it an institution in the technical sense that it is instituted by law, which is what it actually means, why is it that it needs special care but durable relations do not? It can be dissolved only in limited circumstances but durable relations can be ended by the unilateral act of one party. I do not understand this.
Senator Higgins said yesterday that somehow implicit in this was an analogue of the argument that was used in the marriage equality referendum that heterosexual people’s marriages were somehow devalued by the existence of marriage among homosexual people. I do not see that at all here. I am not arguing that marriage is devalued rather I am saying that we are creating a two-tier situation where one can only be dissolved by divorce whereas the other can be dissolved by walking out the door and simply closing it behind you. That is not in any sense offensive, rather, it is the legal reality. You can walk out the door. One is different from the other. One is part of the constitutional fabric saying that it cannot be dissolved except in very limited circumstances and it cannot be dissolved unless you have looked after the parties to it.
There is a broader social issue as well. I wish to put this to the Government. I know that probably all of this is futile but I am determined to put it on the record. I and others advocated for the marriage equality referendum. We were confronted with Frances Fitzgerald, the then Minister, sponsoring it, saying that marriage was a fundamental institution of the State and it was wrong to deny it. I agreed with this in respect of a gay or lesbian couple, especially those who wanted to look after each other, those who wanted to have spousal status in regard to each other’s affairs and those who wanted to adopt children and bring them up without any discrimination. We changed the law and I was an enthusiastic supporter of doing so. I believed that to deny gay and lesbian couples the entitlement to form families was profoundly unjust in the world we were in.
I should say, lest anybody doubts where I am coming from, when I was Minister for Justice, the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network, GLEN, came to my Department.
This was in 2003, I would say. I told GLEN I could not give it a referendum, because it would be defeated and because I did not think my partners in government would be interested in such a referendum, but I would go along the lines of civil partnership. The group under former Deputy Anne Colley reported and that turned into the civil partnership aspect of the 2010 Act. If the argument by gay couples that they were being unfairly kept out of marriage means anything, it cannot be that durable relations, which they could always form, were an adequate substitute for them. They would not have accepted it at the time that amendment was made, and rightly not. But looking now to what is to be the future if this amendment is passed, I do have to ask a broader social question. Figures were quoted here and they were interesting, namely, that 40% of children are born out of wedlock at the moment and that roughly 20% of families are single-parent families. If you mine down into those figures, I think an awful lot of children born out of wedlock are later the subject of a marriage between their parents. I think that probably happens in a lot of them because the 40% and the 20% do not seem to correspond as figures. But even if there is a very significant cohabiting community who are not interested in getting married for one reason or another, we do have to ask the wider social question: is the State indifferent to whether cohabiting couples with or without children are married or not? Is it a matter of complete indifference to the State or does the State actually favour marriage? Does the State believe that marriage is in some sense preferable than mere cohabitation? I do not see the answer to that question being proffered by anyone. I totally accept the proposition that Senator McGreehan advanced yesterday that people are free to marry or not to marry and it is none of my business whether they do or not. Personally, it is none of my business - I follow that and I do not go around tut-tutting - but is the State indifferent to that choice and should it be indifferent to that choice? Especially if it is saying that it will guard with special care the institution of marriage, then why are you bothering to guard with special care if you do not really care whether people enter into it in the first place? Why do you say to parties to it that you cannot dissolve it unless you make adequate provision for children but if you remain unmarried, those rules do not apply to you? I wonder. Of course things have changed from holy Catholic Ireland, for which I am not a spokesman and never have been, but we have scrapped the concept of illegitimacy. We have instituted cohabitation. There was reference yesterday to John Charles McQuaid. He would be spinning in his grave if he thought that any of these things would have been done so shortly after his departure from the religious stage. But when we have a Supreme Court which says to Mr. O’Meara “Your equality rights trump the right of the Legislature to provide welfare contingent on there having been a marriage at some stage,” we have moved an awful long way from the society which was described here so vividly by some of the speakers yesterday; de Valera’s Ireland. We have moved an awful long way from that but we still have to ask ourselves this fundamental question, does the State put a value on marriage and, if so, why? Is it saying “We recognise that you are entering into a legal commitment which cannot be dissolved except by a court order in the limited circumstances provided for in the Constitution”? Are we saying that matters? Is there some value or some social good alleged to exist in the semi-permanence of marriage? The social good that was alleged, for instance, to exist in relation to the marriage equality debate and decision of the Irish people.
Those are the questions that I said yesterday that I believe we have to answer. The amendment in my name keeps for this House the control of what is a durable relationship. If we hand it away and lose control of that concept, we effectively hand over to the Judiciary a vital part of the legislative power of the Irish State.
Amendments Nos. 6 to 9, inclusive, are similar in nature but they feature different wording as compromises. Sometimes you do not realise how personal a situation is until you have to engage with it in the moment. Although you know it is in the background, you are just trying to move through it. Our first amendment changes the phrasing to “including but not limited to Families founded on marriage”. I was about eight years when I first found out my mam and dad were not married. I stand here and here people talk about protection and the law but it is far from only about protection. The Constitution, as fundamental law underpinning Ireland’s legislation, which develops from it, is a fundamental principle that also underlines both the legislative changes that are needed and how a society views individuals and their situations and family set-ups - whether they are married or live with someone and they do not marry them – whatever it may be. I remember being eight years old and my friend went into the shop to buy an anniversary card for her mam and dad and I remember feeling a bit silly because I did not know what it was and asked her, “What’s an anniversary card?” She said that an anniversary card was how long her mam and dad were married and I said it was interesting. I was not sure I recognised that as a thing in the house. My mind began to turn and turn. I used to go into other houses and see the pictures on the wall of people’s mams and dads getting married with wedding dresses and so on. Then I started to ask questions. I went to church a lot at the time, whether people want to believe it or not. I sang in the choir and played the tin whistle. I was an altar girl and got up every Sunday morning and went to church. That narrative seeped in about what a family was and I was thinking about this when I was eight years old. Whether we like it or not, Catholicism is intertwined with the Constitution and always has been.
That is okay if people live a life of Catholicism but if they do not, parts of this Constitution do not represent or recognise them. Whatever about legal protections that flow from it, those parts do not even recognise me as a child and my relationship to my mother and my father. My mother, from that moment, I realised looking back, was afraid to tell me they were not married. She was ashamed. We lived in a situation where people would judge them and not talk to them for not being married. I also listened in religion class as to what the idea of a family was, what marriage was and what sin was, so all of that was in me. At eight years old, when I learned my Mam and Dad were not married, my world fell apart. Imagine being eight and your world falling apart. Your parents do not love you any less. They reared me well, put me into every club and everything I wanted to join. They did my homework with me, taught me how to read, and now something in society had seeped into me that told me that my family was all of a sudden different from every other family on the street and I was less than their families. On top of that, I believed we should not be together and in that I damaged the relationships as I got older with my Mam and Dad because the society that shames seeped in on me as a child. Therefore, this is more than about protection. It is about recognition that there was nothing different about me growing up with my Mam and Dad. Nothing. She should not have had to wear a wedding ring to pretend or go to court to change our names. My name was not always Ruane. I found that out at some stage as well. I was actually a Losty - my name was Lynn Losty - which was my mother's name but my Mam wanted us to feel like a unit, to not feel any different than anybody else and we should have never been made feel like so.
The Constitution's definition of family is what set the framework in Irish thinking on how we morally judge other families who do not get married or who do not want to be married. Then as you go on, my situation is captured in the other amendments regarding the parent-child relationship. I had my first daughter at 15 years old. Obviously, I knew at that stage that she was my daughter and we had other rights outside of the Constitution but then I had to place it again within this. I do not even want to say the word but I remember being in school, or it may have been on trip somewhere, and the "b" word being used for kids that were not from a marriage. Members will all know what word I am referring to. It is obviously a very derogatory term for an illegitimate child. Not only, because of the Constitution and the laws that flow from it, was I not feeling like our family was as good or as valued as everyone else's, I am also taking on some sort of a label as illegitimate. I am not legitimate. The State and Constitution is telling me, as a child, that I am not legitimate. The Constitution is important to change. I know Senator McDowell spoke about the laws we can change in the interim but it is the Constitution that set the mindset that allowed families such as mine be mistreated, misjudged, ostracised, and ashamed, so much so that it affected our interpersonal relationships because I did not know what to do with that shame as a child. This is why it is important to change the Constitution and to not only recognise marriage as the family unit. Senator McDowell asked why should we not protect durable relationships with the same vigour that marriage is protected. Exactly. Why not? We could have put forward an amendment that put them on an equal footing and so could Senator McDowell. However, just as Senator McDowell is saying that legislation could be introduced on pensions and taxation, the State can also introduce legislation after the referendum to makes sure there is a legal framework around cohabitees and the separation of assets and all of those. If the legislation can flow for the O'Meara situation, it can flow on the alternative in terms of what is set out in the changes in the Constitution.
Going on and having my children, I am obviously a little bit wiser and older now and have shaken off some of that Catholic shame regarding what I feel about my family, whether it is a sinful or valued family or whether the State wants to recognise us as a family. I have my two daughters but in the Constitution, we are not considered a family. My daughter is in the Public Gallery with me today. We are not a family. For the past hour, I have had to listen to the talk about protection of marriage and assets and all of this and all I say is my daughter is my asset. Jordanne is my asset. They are my family. They are who I am and nothing can change that in my mind but the Constitution of this State states we are not a family. How would anyone would want to stand over that? She has rights outside of that constitutional wording but given the fact that the blueprint for what Ireland says it wants to be and from where all law should flow says we are not a family, of course we need to change that so all families are included. My daughters have two different Dads. Their Dads have other children from later relationships and my daughter's siblings are also their family but the Constitution does not recognise that as so. Jaelynne and Jordanne each have their siblings. The family is wider. Do I want us all to move in together and start saying we are all a family? No, we are not, but through the bonds they have to each other, they are family and we are family. I then felt the need to make sure the kids each has their Da's names so that they knew there was a connection to their Dads even if the Constitution did not recognise them as family because relationships and identity are so important. I was young and thought if the Constitution did not recognise them, I would make sure, even though we are not married and I have ended up being a single mother very early on with both kids, that they have their Dads' names. I would make sure, even if the Constitution refused to recognise it, they understood that I recognised that relationship with their Dads and that it was sacred to us no matter what the make-up of our family was.
Within that then, what we have is the idea that we do not have to dissolve a situation of cohabiting to move on to be with someone else and cohabit. However, the thing is if you share assets, you still have to split those assets. There is also children's rights. There is still article 42A which sets out children's rights. It is what the O'Meara case was won on yesterday. Therefore, even if somebody is with me and I have two children with them, the children's rights still exist within that in ensuring the provisions are introduced to protect those children whether that be with child maintenance or something else. That is another area where we can protect regarding cohabitees. The child maintenance legislation that I have been drafting, with which Senator Seery Kearney and others have been helping, takes into account all parents whether a one- or two-parent family and sets it out in the same way. Therefore, there are other structures we can build afterwards for the legislative tools that are needed to ensure children are always protected regardless of the relationship status of their parents. Whether parents are married or not should never determine whether a child is catered for or is at risk of experiencing any sort of poverty because of the breakdown of a relationship. Children will always remain in the centre of that, including constitutionally. The problem is, if we do not recognise them as a family, we create a situation where we are still saying that if your parents are married, you are of more value or recognised to a greater degree.
It is Sharon. There is no point saying "No"; I lived it.
It does not discriminate.
Sorry, it does discriminate.
Against-----
Senator Ruane, without interruption.
All laws, at the end of the day, are tested against constitutionality. In the beginning, when laws are drafted even regarding pensions, do you think when pensions such as the widow's pension were first considered that marriage was not put in as a criteria based on the fact that we place so much importance on marriage? We might look at it in less narrow terms now but it mattered then. When it came to my Mam and Dad, she looked after him to the day that he died. She was responsible for him, had to repay the mortgage which she continues to pay, was responsible for converting the room when his Parkinson's disease progressed, and was responsible for him in every other way that a married couple would be until the moment he died and then she was not entitled to a window's pension.
She was not considered for that. However, while he was alive, they were considered as a partnership, taking care of children in every other way until that. Therefore, it does discriminate. Our policies have existed based on the ideals the country set out all those years ago, of how we want to live together, how we want to be together, what we value and what we do not value.
My concern here is that we are beginning to muddy the water. There are over 1 million one-parent households. It would be really sad to make those women think that their rights are being taken away by changing the Constitution. I have to tell all my friends and people who come to me who are not married that they are already not recognised in it. That is what people are failing to tell everybody. When they go out and campaign, they say "Oh, your rights as a woman in the Constitution are being taken away", without saying, "Oh, sorry, if you're actually a one-parent household, you didn't have them anyway." Nobody is giving the full context here.
Women are afraid they are actually losing something because of this amendment instead of gaining something from it in terms of recognition of who they are as a family and what they are to their children, their loved ones and the people they decide to spend the rest of their lives with. That is why it is important to really focus on durable relationships and what that means. Was that something I was enthused about? No, because it is a conversation we need to have as to what it means. I agree with Senator McDowell that we should not rely on the courts. I believe the Government should set out what a durable relationship is. Obviously, we do not want it to be too wide, but we do not want it to be too narrow either.
Not everybody can just access the courts. We do not want to make it a system based on people who have the ability, energy and perhaps the money to take a case. We do not want to create that situation. The Government needs to lay out what durable relationships are. That is why our amendments deal with durable relationships, not only in respect of people who cohabit but also the relationship between parents and child, which is very important.
We also need to consider kinship situations. I do not know if that has come up in the debates in the Dáil or in this Chamber yesterday. There are other situations that need to be determined as family. Some people have to raise younger siblings because a parent died. There may have been addiction or some other hardship within the family. Does a durable relationship take in that it will not necessarily be adult to adult or parent to child but also child to child, for example, sister to sister? If, God forbid, anything happened to me, would my girls be considered family within a durable relationship in the Constitution in terms of how they are supported and recognised? We need to figure out what durable relationships are.
Alongside the referendum, we also need to consider how we recognise one-parent households in general to make sure they have those protections in this. We should not be forcing women onto jobseeker's transitional payment when their kids are 14 because they should be protected under durable relationships in the same way that married people are. If they choose to stay at home or they choose to go out to work, they need to be supported in both scenarios. If they choose to stay at home, social welfare policy needs to be joined up with that to ensure that an unmarried woman who decides to stay at home is financially supported and not forced onto jobseeker's transitional payment when the child turns 14.
There are many policy intentions that can and should change along with this. However, this is not only about protection, although that is a huge part of it. It is also about recognising that Ireland has many different types of families and that marriage will not always be the choice of some people. Perhaps they do not believe in the institution of marriage or it just did not work out or perhaps they just did not get married but they have children - whatever the case may be. In each of our amendments relating to durable relationship, we need a caveat that recognises that durable relationship in those senses is recognised as parent to child - that my daughter and I are recognised as family.
I did a quick search of the Constitution to find how many times the words "woman" and "women" are used. There is a whole narrative out there that women's rights are being taken out of the Constitution. The word "women" is mentioned twice and the word "woman" is mentioned once. Where "woman" is mentioned, it is only in relation to her place within the home and that is the only reference that is being taken out. On the other two occasions where "women" are mentioned, they are mentioned in respect of their rights as equal to men. I think one is in the workplace and I would need to double-check where the other one is. Women and woman are only mentioned three times. It is an absolute lie to create this confusion or illusion to women that everything that they are protected from within the Constitution is all of a sudden being eroded away. It is an absolute lie because it is not in there. The only one being removed is the one that tells them where their place is.
No, it does not.
It does tell them where their place is. I did not interrupt Senator McDowell's hour-long lecture. I felt like I was in a law lecture in UCD or something. However, Senator Keogan has twice intervened in my contribution. I ask her to show respect and not do so anymore.
The Constitution says that a woman's place is in the home because it seeks to protect it with full force, nearly because it provides that she will be supported to maintain her place within the home. Why does it not refer to a parent's place within a home? It is, therefore, telling the woman her place. If it was only protecting someone's ability to stay at home and care for their children, it would make the same reference to mother and father. It would say that we will protect the parents' right to stay in the home. However, it does not say that; it says woman. Therefore, it is making a differentiation. It is saying that, by the fact of being the mother, the woman's place is in the home.
As I said, there are only three references to woman or women and the one to come out is the one saying that her place is in the home and rightly so. If people want to strengthen the Constitution to protect women's rights, they have had a very long time in politics to do that. We could be doing that through lone parent legislation. We could be doing that through the widow's pension legislation. We could be doing that in every other aspect where women are treated as less equal, but we do not.
Within the child maintenance system, there is this idea that married people have to take on all these extra layers before they move on. I have seen many people just walk out of the home. They do not say they are going to stay and make sure they do it right by paying all the maintenance. I have watched people delay divorce proceedings on purpose for years and not pay maintenance to their children. For five years, I have been working on child maintenance stuff. Many of these married women receive absolutely nothing from their husbands in child maintenance. It is not true that there is some extra protection and that just because people have to go through the courts, they are biased by it. There are plenty of women who are worse off after their husbands have left the home. In some cases, it may be vice versa if the woman has left the home.
Even with child maintenance, people go to court and are told how much maintenance they have to pay. Nobody follows the person around to make sure they pay it. It is not deducted by Revenue or added as a tax credit. None of that is done. Plenty of people have gone through divorces and are not abiding by the court ruling. That needs to be fixed. When we are doing that, we need to ensure that protections available for married people are also available for cohabiting families so that they are also protected. Someone cannot just walk away if they have children in a house with somebody or both names are on a mortgage application or car loan. Surely the law already exists to protect people who share assets regardless. Siblings can take each other to court over assets. It is not something that is only carved out for married couples. That might happen through divorce proceedings.
People might have to take other types of actions. At the end of the day, we should be protecting the families of cohabiting couples in the same way that we protect the families of married couples. On top of that, we need to make sure we are recognising people and not standing over the idea that family is only going to be recognised by the Constitution for those who are married. The Constitution does not represent me or reflect my family. It does not reflect me when I was a child and now it does not reflect me as a mother, and I am one of many people.
At the end of the day, why would we care about how anybody else lives or chooses to live? It actually benefits everyone. Equality and equity benefit the whole of society. If we can view everyone through the prism of being the same regardless of how they choose to live, then that benefits everyone. It does not take away anything from anyone, and we build in the legal structures to make sure that if there are any disagreements or separations that kids are always protected, their rights are protected and they are financially protected, and that any other legal issues can be done in legislation.
I will wrap up now but for me, it has been really confusing to watch the advocacy of some people against changing the definition of family. They will ground it in some red herrings, and also this idea that it is only about protection and people are still protected elsewhere. In advocating against changing how we view, recognise and value family systems and relationships, they are actually working to exclude many people in our society from being recognised in the same way as married couples. How people can make that make sense in their heads, and to try to sit it in a legal or political framework, is dishonest. It is deeper than that, and I think it is not about legal changes. It is that they actually believe marriage is protected above all else and other types of families do not matter in the same way that a married couple does. If they are going to say that is what family is and that is what they are going to fight for, then they are actually saying that. They can wrap it up in as many different campaign slogans or legal, political and social arguments as they want but when they get right down into the heart of it, what they are saying is, "We do not want our Constitution to recognise you and your family", and that is it. That has to change.
We have heard quite lengthy journeys through different aspects of the law across the course of the debate. One part of the summary of what we have heard is that families are complicated, and that it is possible to legislate. It is possible to legislate before the referendum and it will be possible to legislate after the referendum. We could improve a lot of our legislation with regard to how different families are treated. We should improve a lot of our social protection codes with regard to how different families are treated. Fundamentally, the question is, given that families are complicated, do we recognise that or not? The question is not a matter of, if people vote "No", somehow we will be back to everyone being in married families. The reality that there are complicated families will still be here. The reality will still be here that our legislation needs to be improved and made more equal in lots of ways. What we will be doing is pretending, and saying that we still want to pretend that "family" is only the married couple. We still want that illusion that there is only one version of family. We want married people to get that because there is already a special line that is still going to be in the Constitution after this referendum, no matter what the result, which will say that marriage gets special protection and recognition, that married people should also be the only ones who get to be called "family", and no one else should be called "family".
There is complexity, and the question is, are we going to acknowledge it? Do we want a Constitution that reflects the reality? It is not a matter of asking if the State is indifferent, and would we prefer if everybody was married or not. By putting it in the Constitution, is it meant to be there as a motivation to encourage everybody to ensure they get into a neat, married family unit? That is what it was seen as, for a long time. Some of the motivation, and some of the actions that were taken to make sure we motivated everybody to get themselves into a neat, married family unit included disappearing those who did not fit the model. When we talk about not recognising them in the Constitution, we also made sure they were invisible. Sometimes we made sure they were invisible in mother and baby homes. Sometimes we made them invisible by adoption laws that were shrouded in secrecy because one could get into a good married family and one's other family could disappear. For example, those are clauses that were used when we discussed the idea of open adoption, something I brought through this Chamber before for discussion. However, there is only one family unit.
This idea has been doing damage with regard to the effect it has had on social policy. The O'Meara ruling, and the widower's pension, is one example of the damage it has done but there are plenty more. There are plenty more in the different treatment that one-parent families have had within our social welfare system. To be absolutely clear, it did damage in the O'Meara case at the High Court. It was that clause regarding the family that was used to deny the widower's pension. It was the other clause, a completely different and recent one - Article 42A, on the rights of the child - that was used in order to combat that and say that actually, the Constitution has changed. We now have the rights of the child as well, and they have to be considered. That was the basis on which the pension was granted.
Regarding the rights of the child referendum, the rights of the child clause and the child and family relationship Bill, all of that work that was complemented here by the detailed work on cohabitation, has tried to work around the big elephant in the room, which is that we have a definition of family in the Constitution that is not true or fair. We have had to work around it. Yes, we can legislate to try and work around it but we are still, at the top tier of our legislation or law in this State, coming up against the fact that the constitutional law permits a discrimination and different treatment. That is fundamentally there.
We can work all around it, and we can produce legislation. Yes, we want the Government to come back - that is why we have amendments here - and make really clear to us how it is going to interpret "durable relationships". What I know is that we will be able to legislate if we need to but what I want to know is how the Government will take action. I want to hear that it is not going to force, for example, one-parent families to have to take cases to vindicate that they are a durable relationship but that the State will take that interpretation and immediately act on it. It will be for the State and the Government, initially, to interpret this new clause in the Constitution and to put it into effect. For example, in this year's social protection legislation, will we see an overhaul of those measures that treated some families unequally, making sure that we are in fact levelling up the protection for families in Ireland?
Again, we hear about concerns about what might happen with regard to durable relationships. It has been open to any persons concerned about the unequal treatment of families in Ireland to take actions in respect of that. If people are concerned around what happens with regard to cohabitees, they can bring legislation on the proposals. I know with regard to one-parent families, for example, when I sat on the social protection committee in the last Oireachtas, that we brought forward concrete proposals that would have improved the treatment of one-parent families in Ireland. Some of those who are most passionate about the family and mothers, and what they might they do and their care role, did not participate in or contribute to that debate. They were not that interested, apparently, in that topic at the time.
When we talk about wanting to improve and give better protections and supports, yes, that is the work of the Legislature and that is something we should all be doing. When it comes to the fundamental message and signal we send, we heard from my colleague Senator Ruane about the message it sends to families. Let us also look to the message it sends to everybody about the Constitution.
I want a Constitution that feels true, that feels real. We are losing something. I spoke yesterday about the idea of the fundamental unit of society, those who are contributing to society and shaping it. The family does work in the Constitution. It is not merely about receiving benefits. It is about doing work and contributing. In that idea of contributing, it is important to recognise the contribution of everybody. The State needs everybody who considers themselves to be in a family to also feel that moral role of contributing to the State that is outlined in the vision for the family.
There are other areas also where there are unequal rights that flow. Article 42 refers to "the Family" - with a capital F - as primary educator. Actually in our Constitution only married families are the primary educators. We saw how one-parent families had their children taken from them and put into industrial schools. There are consequences from having an inequality bang in the middle of our Constitution. We can work around it and try to alleviate the negative impacts. We can take advantage of it, if we want to promote some inequalities or if we want to find a group or two that are going to be a little bit easier to kick because they do not have that same protection. Fundamentally, what we are discussing here and what the referendum is going to be about is whether we are okay with pretending that only married people are family. Are we okay with telling one-parent families - the people we talk about when we talk about the parent-child relationship - and cohabiting couples that they are not family? We can shroud it in as many complications as we like but that is the fundamental message. If this referendum does not pass, the message will be that only married people are family. We will be saying that even louder and we will not be able to blame it on the 1930s or John Charles McQuaid for it.
I will quickly go through our amendments. I preferred the wording we had from the Joint Committee on Gender Equality. The committee produced an action plan and I want to hear the Minister will take it forward. The plan set out how, if we put equality of families into the Constitution, that has to be followed through. It states the Minister must start to fix the social welfare code in many ways and ensure better protections and supports are given to all families. The Minister needs to follow through if we have that equality of family. He needs to show us he will do all of that legislative work, which is always complicated. That is fine because that is our job. We want to know the Minister will do that. I want to hear that he is not going to make individuals, particularly one-parent families, take cases to say that the term "durable relationships" applies to them, but that the State will be acting on the assumption that the term covers one-parent families from the beginning and will take actions immediately in respect of that. I want the State effectively to bring that wide, strong interpretation into effect. I want to hear the State will fight for a definition of durable family to include one-parent families if it is put upon to fight for that. That is really important.
We have the European law in respect of durable families. As is its prerogative, it seems to be the intention of the Irish State to have a wider interpretation of "durable" that goes beyond the limits within that European law. I would like to be assured that parent-child relationships will be included. We also have an amendment in which we seek to be specific about cohabitees. That is a huge cohort of persons and families. There is a gap between the 40% and 20% figures. Many couples in Ireland who have been together for decades are not married and have children in their relationships.
As I said, I preferred the wording we had. "Marital family" was the wording used by the committee. I understand that the concern was that marital family would be a new version of the family. I have suggested in our amendment the term "the family based on marriage" because "family" and "marriage" are both terms that have precedent in the Constitution. Our amendment would include but would not be limited to families founded on marriage. The Minister might indicate why that approach was not taken. It might have avoided some of the confusion that has been created around the term "durable relationships". Either way, durable relationship at least is the possibility for a more equal family to be recognised versus the closing of the door yet again on so many families in Ireland.
What a lesson I have had today in understanding what has been confusing for years. I am looking at the old wording of the Constitution, which states "The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home."
That is the next Bill.
Senator Ruane remarked on the social welfare changes that forced single mothers to declare that they were available for work once their children turned 14. Was that complying with the Constitution as it stood at the time? I doubt it very much.
Yes, it was because they are not married.
It does not relate to the amendments.
We cannot have engagements across the House.
I understand exactly where the Senator is coming from. Speaking of being married or not married, a friend of my father for 33 years was married for seven years. When he separated from his wife, he moved in and lived with another woman. When he died 26 years later his pension was paid to his former wife, not to the woman he lived with. That was an anomaly. What I see in this constitutional referendum is that lawyers will make money for decades as we try to battle our way to understand what is meant by this, that or the other.
Senator Ruane referred to the issue of marriage versus durable relationships. Senator McDowell highlighted the wording that the State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of marriage and to protect it against attack, and then read out the remaining subsections of that article. Whether we like it or not, and Senator Ruane has referred to this, we have placed marriage on a higher tier than a durable relationship. Senator Ruane said we can fix that with legislation. This is the Constitution. It should be fixed in the Constitution, not in some legislation that will follow at some stage in the future.
Senator Seery Kearney referred yesterday to the elasticity of the definition of the family. We should encompass the definition of the family so as not to exclude, which is done in the wording "durable relationships". In one part of this, we talk about durable relationships. Why have the wording "whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships" in Article 41.1 when the only thing taken out of the current Article 41.3 are the words "on which the family is founded" and the word "marriage" is left in? Why is the word "marriage" in there and why was the term "durable relationship" not just put in there?
Both sides are right but I disagree with Senator Ruane's view that we would have to enact legislation to correct what is missing from this wording. My view is that leaving it to the courts to decide what is and is not a durable relationship is wrong in every sense of the word. Yesterday, Senator Higgins referred to the constant drive in this country to force people into the courts to get explanations or answers.
This morning when thinking about this I was thinking about Vicky Phelan, and that other poor woman from Kilkenny who was dragged to her deathbed while the State defended an indefensible position. Is that what we want out of this referendum? Do we want a situation where single mothers and those in durable relationships - or who believe they are in a durable relationship but whom the court believes they are not - are dragged through the courts? Do we want a situation where some guy walks out? Senator Ruane is 100% correct. I know of dozens of cases of men who walked out on their wives and children and left them penniless and never paid maintenance. Time and again they are not dragged back to the courts and they just ignore it. She is 100% right. If the State really cared it would deduct the maintenance straight out of your wages and send it straight to the woman who is looking after the children - or to the man, although there are fewer men caught that way than women. We leave it to those who are less able to fight their corner to fight their corner. It took extreme courage to stick with the case decided on yesterday in the Supreme Court, and get to the Supreme Court. I am really concerned.
The debate today is the most instructive debate I have heard for a long time in this House. What we needed was time to tease out all of these issues and to take on board the amendments being brought forward in good faith. They are good amendments. There are people here who I do not agree with. There are people I like and people I do not like. However, at the end of the day, I have not seen anything in an amendment that I would not want to try to support as best I can. I really think that what we are going to do with this, if it passes, is create a field day for lawyers as we try to resolve the family law issues it will lead to.
I do not want to go on too long. Before I finish, I am extremely concerned that the word on the street is that the Government has threatened the NGOs that would be directly impacted by this legislation, that if they do not support a "Yes" vote, their funding may be hit. One of the statements made on 6 January needs to be addressed by the Minister in this House. One of the statements made by the National Women's Council of Ireland was that a "No" vote on Article 41 would see the State's oppressive role in keeping women-----
I ask the Senator to speak to the amendments.
This is an important part of the amendment.
The Minister can choose to address the overall point.
That is fine. It says that it will keep women from careers and employment. The Minister needs to address that, because that is another important issue that is impacting the way this referendum will go. I am afraid the wording we have at the moment is flawed. My colleagues on both sides this morning have shown the flaws. The Civil Engagement Group and Senator McDowell have shown the flaws, and the flaws lie in a failure to define the durable relationship.
I will leave it at that. There has been plenty of talk and I am sure other people want to get their spoke in.
Senator McDowell earlier referred to Woody Allen. I know Woody Allen also said that 90% of success is showing up. Would that it were the case that our presence here today could actually get the Government to think again about what it is doing. I will have to see, but I have my doubts. Senator McDowell and I may have different views on what precisely marriage is. We certainly were not on the same side of the marriage referendum. He would probably disagree with me, to some degree and in some ways, that referendum was the first step in the deconstruction of marriage and what it means in our society. Whether I am right or wrong in that, I think we can both agree - I do not want to put words in his mouth - that marriage is certainly being deconstructed here. It is a bizarre situation that the Minister can come into this Chamber and tell us not to worry because they are not taking out the State's pledge to guard the institution of marriage and protect it from attack. In fact, the only protection being left to marriage after they are finished with their work with this amendment is to create a disincentive for anybody to get into it because of the difficulty of getting out of it. Gone will be any discussion of what marriage might convey and deliver for society as an institution.
I have heard a lot of talk from friends and colleagues today and in the past couple of days about the past. There is a desire to use the stigmatising behaviour that went on in the past and the character and colour of our society in the past, to somehow create momentum about the need to change our Constitution. I say the following with great respect to my friends, Senators McGreehan and Ruane. I think there is a misunderstanding of the past going on here when people are overly inclined to excoriate every aspect of it. The truth is that while Christian ideas certainly contributed to the State's understanding of marriage, the definition of marriage and the provisions made for marriage in the Constitution, those ideas went far beyond marriage. People take many values for granted today such as looking out for the vulnerable in our society and caring for the migrant, the most dispossessed and the least among us. Though people may or may not have religious faith, so many of those ideas are effectively rooted in Christian culture in the western world. That the idea of marriage was recognised by the State as an institution because of what it could deliver for the upbringing of children is no different. Certainly, at a time when there were no laws in the State, there were canon laws centuries ago the Christian church was involved in articulating in terms of the common good. People should be careful what they wish for if they want to excise any Christian remnant from the values of our Constitution and society, because they might lose an awful lot of things they cherish.
Another thing to say is that it is easy to excoriate every aspect of the past. However, when you look in finer detail, you see quite a degree of enlightenment and goodness in the way many things were viewed. I will give one example. The late Judge Rory O'Hanlon became a bête noire for those who disliked his philosophical conservatism, not so much off the Bench but after his life on the Bench. I hope I recall correctly from my law studies. Senator McDowell will confirm whether it is true or not. What was interesting about him was that he had enlightened views about the wrongness of illegitimacy and about the rights of children in those situations. Too much appeal to our personal situation and too much excoriation of the past in broad brush strokes misses a lot of the detail that can perhaps help us to make wise decisions now. I could talk about my own personal experience of growing up in a marital family and seeing a relationship that was not perfect, but by its aspiration to permanence and the presence of both my father and mother I found myself to be extremely lucky. I would want that for as many people as possible. In saying that I am not judging any other person's experience.
When we talk about the Constitution and what it might promote as an ideal, it is wrong to suggest that is some kind of judgment on those whose situations are different from what the Constitution traditionally viewed as normative. This is the other misunderstanding, not just of the past, but of the genius of Bunreacht na hÉireann. It did and does set an ideal. It sets a direction for things. It seeks to link the understanding of family with marriage. The genius of our Constitution is that it has space, and always did have space, for the provision of social protection outside of that. Provision in law for de facto families - the very understanding in the courts of de facto families - was never undermined by the provisions of the Constitution. That is the genius and generosity of our Constitution.
It may very well set a direction or set forth an ideal - and, as I showed yesterday and will, I hope, show again today, it is an evidence-based ideal when talking about the value of marriage for society but it does not denigrate. People need not feel judged by the constitutional ideal of things, particularly when it has always been clear that the Constitution is capable of being interpreted and legislation is possible and did, and does, happen to vindicate the rights of people in their individual situations. We saw that as late as yesterday in the O'Meara decision. Therefore, we need a greater degree of honesty as to what the Constitution is and is not.
I will submit something else. The Constitution at present "pledges ... to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family [with a capital F] is founded, and to protect it against attack". I disagree with Senator Ruane when she says the Constitution does not recognise anything else as a family. The proper interpretation of that clause is that, institutionally speaking, the Constitution recognises the link between marriage and family in broad, general and societal terms, but it was never unconstitutional to see situations that were not in their individual cases founded on marriage as not being families. That is, I think, the true meaning of the Constitution, that, institutionally, yes, the family is founded on marriage, but that does not deny the existence of many different types of families. I do not think anybody ever seriously understood it to do so. Over time, there were distinctions in certain times and places, in particular cases, distinctions that were justified or, when they were not justified, repealed. If, however, the House thinks about whether in fact it was necessary to amend the Constitution to secure any of the benefits for, for want of a better phrase, extramarital children, it will immediately see what I am talking about, that is, that the Constitution has flexibility. There needs to be more generosity towards what our Constitution is and what it seeks to achieve. I use the word "deconstructing" because, notwithstanding the comprehensive nature of what the Constitution is and can be, the Government and the Minister today are proposing to deconstruct and to decouple. This is a referendum proposal that would decouple the family from marriage and decouple marriage from couples because it is not even clear that more than two people may be the basis for founding a family. We have heard from other speakers about the chaotic unpredictability of the phrase "durable relationships" and what it may or may not mean now and into the future. Maybe more relevant to what I will say later on the other referendum proposal, the Government is seeking to decouple care from that given by fathers and mothers within the home specifically and to take away the specific honouring of that.
Senator Ruane does not need to convince me that men should be made to meet their obligations to provide maintenance and to provide for their children. I would probably go further than many Members and say that anybody who fathers a child in any circumstance, donor or otherwise, should have a legal responsibility for the provision for his genetic children. We will talk about that, no doubt, another day, but let us not excoriate arguments simply because they do not chime with people's personal experiences and preferences. Let us look at things in an evidential way.
My amendments seek to get rid of the addition of a proposed strange wording to the Constitution, that of "durable relationships", and to provide for an alternative using the wording of the Committee on Gender Equality, a committee which, by the way, refused to take the help of my colleague, Senator Keogan, when offered. My amendments seek to remove the Government's intention to delink marriage from family and from the concept of family. We should not underestimate the extent of the Government's plan to undermine the definition of "family". If it really wanted simply to include what we can generally describe as non-marital families, it could have done so just as my amendment proposes, but it went for the all-embracing option by which a family will mean almost any durable grouping, as marriage likely fits this new category as well, and thus, as a concept, becomes empty of meaning.
That is not an accident. It may have seemed strange to people yesterday that I referred to communism but the truth is that there is an intellectual movement behind the changes proposed here, and I say that with great respect personally for those who are in the vanguard of it but with no fear of naming it and naming precisely what is going on. For neo-communists and the far-left, families are and always have been institutions that perpetuate inequalities, re-enforce gender roles, reproduce class distinctions and re-enforce so-called patriarchal norms. That is their perspective, so modern communists, or indeed progressives, emphasise instead of family the importance of community and collective responsibility in raising and caring for children. This is what I was saying yesterday. What is really at the back of this, in part at the very least, is a desire to supplement or for the State and statism to supplant true respect for families in their constitution and autonomy. The idea is to move away from the nuclear family model and promote a more communal approach to childcare and support. Much of this overlaps with the progressive model of family espoused by An Taoiseach recently, a model which, to quote him, respects "fluidity, diversity and personal freedom". In short, despite the apparent attractiveness of some of those words, what is on offer here is that any grouping is to be a family, and that is exactly what the term "durable relationships" captures. There is no mention of binary and no mention of what durable might mean, other than we know our Supreme Court does not take it to mean lasting, and "lasting" is the word the Taoiseach used in explaining the referendum. Family is to be shorn of its definitional link to marriage. Marriage can give rise to a family, fair enough, but so can any grouping involving any number of adults, it seems, that is, whatever our Supreme Court can tolerate whenever the test cases are brought. This is the pig in the poke that the public are being asked to vote for. The far-left fringe of this Government - it does exist and, though they may be very nice people, their ideology should be clearly named and identified - does not want any legal recognition of gender difference. They want to abolish the word "woman" as far as they can from the Constitution. I take Senator Ruane's point that it is there in some residual form, but it is being taken away where it matters, it could be argued.
(Interruptions).
No. You can check the record, Senator Ruane.
Will you speak through the Chair, please?
They do not want anything like family to cut across their idea of radical equality. They see men's and women's roles in society as indistinguishable, and to achieve that they will use the Trojan Horse of undefined "durable relationships" to now form the fundamental unit of society. Let us think about that. Any anarchic relationship, once it is durable, which does not mean duration, as we know, can form the unit group of society - a relationship in which no duties or responsibilities are spelled out but which is now to have any privilege to which a married couple might be entitled. Again I ask the question I asked yesterday. Where are the mainstream people in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in this? Are they blind? Is this why we had no pre-legislative scrutiny? If we do not ask, we will not be told, and that is a shameful dereliction.
My amendments seek to continue to anchor the family in marriage while extending the cover of family to non-marital, understood as similar to married, relationships. At a minimum, they will protect the binary adult relationship. The wording of my amendment is certainly a reasonable attempt to hit a middle ground here if what the Government says it values it actually does value. As I said, at a minimum, it will protect the binary adult relationship and it will avoid the setting up of new groupings based on durable relationships that will have no responsibilities to one another. Imagine that: relationships that have no responsibility to one another but that can be said on the basis of some vague definition of "durability", non-existent at the moment, to form the unit group of society.
The wording proposed by the Government is a classic modern leftist tactic to enshrine in the Constitution something that is essentially meaningless - a durable relationship - so that later it can be invested with any meaning that advances the political progressive cause. In this case, families will mean what you want them to mean. As Humpty Dumpty told Alice - not our friend Senator Alice but a different Alice - "when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." The Minister might express a view that he does not have throuples, polygamy, strange sects or immigration challenges in mind but that is just his view. If his definition of family is inserted into the Constitution, we have no idea where it can lead. The Minister can reassure us all he wants that the Attorney General sees no issues here with regard to, for example, aspects of immigration and family reunification but we are all wise enough to know that Attorneys General do not possess tablets of stone or fortune-telling crystal balls any more than the rest of us do.
Is the Senator including Senator McDowell in that?
There is no doubt that some former Attorneys General accede to places of great wisdom and insight but we are all wise enough to know that Attorneys General do not possess these crystal balls. The Minister is not willing to show us the small print.
Continuing to anchor the family to marriage gives us a reference point for what we understand a family to be in principle - a nuclear family and relationships based on kinship. It does not exclude other relationships and, as we have seen, our laws and court decisions are inclusive. When we then talk about non-marital families, it is clear what we mean - that the relationship between members, especially adults and children, includes kinship and is not arbitrary, thus allowing the State to trust generally in family members caring for each other, especially for the children, although that cannot be guaranteed-----
As O'Meara did.
-----to always happen, as the O'Meara judgment shows. My amendments are being proposed because as an increasingly troubled society, we should be promoting marriage and not demoting it.
I will go back to the invocation of personal experience, and I respect everybody's personal experience here, including my own. If I say that marriage breakdown and divorce cause a lot of pain to children, am I judging those people who have had to go through that experience? Of course, I am not. I am not denying for an instant people's desire to do the best they can and their best efforts in their individual situation but unless we can talk about what institutions work well and can, on the evidence, be to the benefit of children, we are only really caring about what adults want. Sadly, I see so much of that in legislative and policy initiatives these days where it really seems that the bottom line is children's rights get the lip service but what the adults ultimately want gets the power.
As I said, these amendments are being proposed because as an increasingly troubled society, we should be promoting marriage and not demoting it. Our Government and many NGOs show little appreciation for the value of marriage. Regarding the point made by Senator Craughwell, if any NGO in receipt of any amount of Government money campaigns on one side or the other of this referendum, the first question it should be asked by the media is whether its receipt of Government funding compromises its ability to be a fully honest and independent broker in the assessment of this referendum proposal. Every time the NGO shows up in the media, it should be asked that question because we should always declare our agenda. In business, you declare a conflict of interest-----
We should all declare our agenda.
I will always declare mine. If you are a councillor pushing for planning permission, for example, and you have an agenda to declare, you had better show it.
The Senator is straying from the point.
I accept that and I will not linger on the point except to say that the principles of the McKenna judgment were clear - the Government may not spend public money promoting one side or the other of a referendum. It follows from that in spirit, if not in law, that those receiving public money should be very careful about getting involved in a referendum and must certainly be asked the question each time they show up as to whether their bias has an aspect of self-interest because the Government and many NGOs show little appreciation for the value of marriage.
Marriage is a social good. It has a causal impact on outcomes for adults and children with regard to completing college, earnings in life, social and emotional adjustment, employment prospects and future marriage and mental health prospects. As I said yesterday, the two-parent married home has no competition when it comes to delivering the goods for families. There is a mysterious dearth of studies in this country but the Americans are not slow in evaluating what is good. I make this point because a question has to be asked before we proceed further in this debate. Are we allowed to say what is objectively true and evidence-based or are we to be faulted for finding apparent distinctions in the evidence between what works better or what does not work as well simply because that does not endorse every single person's individual choice, which is always to be respected by me, the State, the courts and everyone else? Are we allowed to point to what the evidence shows? There has been no research on or promotion of marriage in this country. We wonder aloud why we have high crime in disadvantaged communities where there uncontrolled groups of young people controlling the streets in places, yet we do nothing to harness the value of marriage as a factor while supporting all sorts of other situations where people do great work in giving extra support to those who go it alone in parenting. Can we not look at what the evidence supports to see if there is an argument for honouring marriage? Why else would the Minister want to leave in the Constitution that the State guards the institution of marriage and will protect it from attack? There is an unwillingness to acknowledge what marriage does, there is lip service to continuing to respect it and there is a stripping away of any proposed theoretically and socially ideal link for marriage with the establishments of family in our society in general, with due regard and support for the widest range of situations.
A person in the least affluent social grouping in Ireland is only half as likely to be married as someone in the most affluent group and is three times more likely to have suffered a broken marriage. Does that mean that marriage is just some kind of bourgeois middle-class institution or is it something we should wonder about as to whether marriage has something to contribute to our society?
I remind Members that we are dealing with amendments and a Bill. Could they keep their points within-----
I will conclude. What I see in this Government proposal is actually an attack on disadvantaged communities more than on anybody else. I have no vested interest in promoting something for some kind of theoretical reason. I call on myself and everybody else to look at the evidence and to see whether there is a reason the State should have some respect for marriage between men and women. Is it just another option in terms of people who want to express their love publicly or does it have some kind of social benefit? That is the question I ask people to interrogate. Do not take my assertions. Do the research. Then, in light of that, can we have a discussion about whether a particular value should be placed on marriage in the Constitution as some kind of ideal or proposed basis for the foundation of families in general terms?
That is what is at issue here because this Government is decoupling family from marriage and decoupling marriage from couples. It can give no good reason except vague assertions about the past. There is a complete failure to give any specific injustice that this referendum change would remedy because we see in our laws and court decisions that people's situations get the respect they deserve. This Government is unable to give any reason for what it is doing outside of an ideological distaste for marriage. That is something it should have to confront in the debate that will lead up to this referendum day.
This is an exhausting debate, and it is frustrating in many ways. If we go back to what we want to achieve in this referendum, it is quite simple. It is quite clear. It is whether this country and its people want our Constitution - all our Constitution - to catch up with the society that we live in. Those who advocate for a "No" vote have to ask themselves whether they are happy that the Constitution leaves out so many homes. I say "homes" because under the Constitution, they are not families; they are homes. Many homes are left outside and not acknowledged in the Constitution. I and, I think, this referendum want to say is that those homes that are made up of durable relationships, of people who are not married, lone parents or a grandmother to her grandson or granddaughter are a family. It is really simple.
Even before this Constitution and all through the years, there have been different sorts of families. We always have had complicated families. It is not new that we have had complicated families. If one looks back to the census of 1911 and those years, you see complicated families. I might have asked my grandmother who was that person who was living with such a person, to be told that he was whoever's son and he lived with us because his parents had died or were living abroad working or whatever. They lived with us but that little part, that unit, was not recognised as a family.
Change can be difficult. There is a fear of change. Sometimes modernity is fearful. The change and that fear is striking in the debate here. I hear talk about how the past should not be talked about. I am sorry but the past shapes our present. It shapes what we do next. It is not a misunderstanding of or not understanding the small context of how the past was experienced by you or by someone else. It is about the misunderstanding or non-acceptance of what the past has done unto people other than you and an acceptance of what the past has done to people.
We talk about intergenerational harm. We talk about the intergenerational legacy in many other ways but there is an effect of what the past has done unto the present. The past is highly relevant in this discussion because what we are trying to do is to bring our Constitution forward. Our legislation has brought us forward but our Constitution has stayed steady.
I got a phone call last night on my way home from Dublin. It was from a lady who is in her 70s. She reminded me of when she was younger and there were great discussions about the lone-parent payment. The talk about town was that they all would be going out and getting pregnant to get the few pounds and they would all want it. Where was that discussion coming from? It was coming from people thinking that it would be just to get the few pounds. That was the argument against that measure, because all young ones would be going out to get themselves pregnant. We have come a long way from that, thank goodness.
Now we have to move a little bit further to say families are different. I was entertained by Senator McDowell's contribution and that this referendum is not a push for an acceptance of promiscuity and that you cannot just jump into one cohabiting relationship or one durable relationship and jump out. We are not in Lanigan's Ball here. Just because we pass this referendum does not mean you can run out and leave responsibilities behind. We should have more faith in people. People should have had more faith in young women in the 1970s when they were saying that payments should not be given to single mothers because other ones will just follow suit and get the payment, whatever measly payment it was back then.
There is talk about deconstructing marriage and a demoting of marriage. It is quite the opposite in this referendum because marriage clearly is still there. A valid argument on deconstruction of marriage would be if marriage was taken out of the Constitution. That would validate Senator Mullen's argument.
It does not affect the institution of marriage. Marriage is sacred. It is lovely. It is an acknowledgement, a signed contract. I would say that Senator McDowell, as a senior counsel, loves a good contract. That is what marriage is. Acknowledging a family and its difference in no way downgrades a civil contract, a contract of marriage, and for our Constitution to acknowledge the diversity of people and the diversity of family does not either.
On denying that opportunity, I was struck by Senator Higgins's comment that we will not be able to blame de Valera and Archbishop McQuaid if this referendum is not passed. We will only be able to blame modern Ireland. We will only be able to blame the naysayers. That would be a sad indictment of this country, when it has come so far in the past few decades.
To accept change, you can be fearful of change but should not persecute and downgrade people and their family in their choice of how they run their lives. You can still have your ideal of the family unit under marriage. You can still have that and can still live by that; the constitutional amendment will not affect that.
As a modern and changing country, we should trust people, couples and families and should modernise our Constitution to accept that the ideal never really existed and that the Constitution should reflect our State and reflect that families are made up of difference.
I note to Senator Keogan that I am going by the list I had before me here when I came into the Chair. The list had Senator McGreehan, who has just concluded, and then Senators Martin, Seery Kearney, Ruane, Higgins and Conway. I can include Senator Keogan, if she wishes.
Thank you. I thought he had seen me but that is all right.
I am just clarifying that when I came in, that is the list I have. I will add Senator Keogan to the list now.
Thank you.
In order that there is no confusion and that no comments will be passed, I make that clear to everybody.
As was stated, in the past so-called non-marital families, especially single mothers, were discriminated against and made feel like they were not a full part of society. In this House, which is reflective of society, we have had a number of passionate contributions.
We heard from Senator Ruane today, who feels in her experiences she was treated like a second-class citizen. We heard from Senator Garvey yesterday. It is difficult to completely forget about the past but we have to look to the future. Thankfully, this country has grown and travelled in a fairly good direction in recent times. The amendment makes it clear in our Constitution that the family extends beyond the marital family and includes one-parent families and cohabiting couples and their children. By making it clear that it extends beyond what we would call the "traditional" family, it is a recognition of reality. It would be easier for the Minister, his party and, indeed, the three parties in government to park this because that is what happened for generations: "Just do not deal with this one, it is a difficult one and let it go for another generation." It presents challenges. Those challenges must be considered and contested where appropriate. I would expect nothing less than a robust debate. That is the beauty of life - we do not all agree. As someone who has worked with Senator McDowell for over a quarter of a century, I assure the House that I am not personally disgusted and no one should be because he has a genuine viewpoint. He said that at the outset. We should not question people's motivations when they put their coherent views from their perspective forward. It does not help to personalise it.
It is not so much time to be generous but a time to be fair and inclusive. The language of Article 41 of the Constitution currently serves to limit the concept of the family to the marital family only and does not reflect the reality of our modern society. The proposed amendment updates our Constitution in this regard to reflect and recognise families in Ireland in a more holistic, inclusive and modern way. In doing so, it responds to the recommendations of the citizens' assembly.
Let us not forget the overriding focus and purpose of the proposed wording is to be more inclusive to reflect the values of equality. It has been said but is worth repeating that the amendment reaffirms the family as a fundamental unit of society but in doing so recognises families beyond those based on marriage. If we think of the O'Meara judgment yesterday, it was exceptionally brave for a plaintiff to come forward and lose in the High Court. I do not have the facts behind that case but the State might say, "Leave it here and there is no cost involved". The plaintiff went again and the Supreme Court gave him a judgment. I believe the judgment yesterday was fair but had this proposed constitutional referendum been enacted before that judgment, that plaintiff would have had fewer sleepless nights waiting on the judgment. Of course, we do not overly prescribe in our Constitution. It is not supposed to be forensic. It is not the Legislature. It sets out the fundamental rules.
I apologise to the Senator. I will cut across him for one second. I acknowledge the presence in the Gallery of the iar-Chathaoirleach and Senator, Denis O'Donovan, who is here with guests from the wonderful towns of Ballincollig and Skibbereen. They are all welcome to Leinster House today. I hope they have a pleasant visit.
I welcome former Senator O'Donovan and his visitors to the Gallery. It is a good day to be here because they will see our Chamber in action. Yesterday, we were all on the one page paying tribute to a Member who gave 36 continuous years of unbroken service. As an Independent, Senator Norris made a huge impact. Today, we agree to disagree and that is part of democracy. The visitors are witnessing that first hand today as they go back to County Cork, possibly, this evening. It is good for democracy to see the workings of our democratic system in progress.
Equally so, when I referred to the O'Meara judgment, we are talking about the separation of powers. The court quite often leads the way and tells the Legislature what to do. It is up to the Legislature to lead and for the court to adjudicate, perhaps, or to give guidance. Once Again, yesterday, the Supreme Court told us that our current legislation is not in keeping with fairness, thankfully, due to the children's referendum that won the day, about all our children being treated equally. We should also remember the constitutional clause of all being equal before the law.
I support and agree with the findings of the McKenna judgments one and two. It is a big leap of faith with which I do not agree to extend that to expert stakeholders in advocacy groups in this area and to question their motives when their very foundation stone is to advocate for people who often have no voice. While I am delighted with the McKenna judgment that the Government should stay well clear of ever financing one side of a referendum, I would hate to think that advocacy groups on either side of any referendum would not share their views. I am not saying Senator Mullen said that but he thinks they should verbally declare where they are coming from at the outset of a press conference.
And be asked the question.
And be asked the question. I respectfully agree to disagree.
Can we all stick to the groupings of amendments before us?
I will read into the record of the House the view of One Family Ireland, the national organisation for one-parent families and people sharing parenting or separating. It has come out for a "Yes" vote. I respect its view because it is on the front line. I do not question that there are some ulterior motives behind what they say. They should give guidance and be respected because they are experts who are stakeholders in this area. It has said:
The Family Referendum presents a unique opportunity to end the exclusion of children, parents, and couples in unmarried families from our Constitution and acknowledge their importance. It represents a significant step [forward] towards addressing the injustices faced by single and unmarried parents throughout Irish history, including societal discrimination and institutionalisation. This referendum symbolises reparation and recognition for those who have long been shamed. Through this referendum, the Constitution will extend its protection to various types of families, such as unmarried parents and their children, one-parent families and unmarried couples.
It seems to be put forward by those opposed to the referendum that if we pass this, the family unit will be collaterally attacked or damaged by creating affording people who want to catch up and enjoy some of the same rights which they have been abysmally neglected for so long. We have seen the interpretation of the Bunreacht and hÉireann in operation as recently as yesterday. Many people, including retired Chief Justice, Susan Denham, often refer to the Constitution as a living document. It will live better when we pass these referendums. It will be easier to give guidance. We are duty-bound as legislators to not leave it to the courts but to lead the way. We have a vibrant court but I would say no to putting something in the Constitution that is overly prescriptive and forensic. Yes, some contributors said there will be knock-on consequences both from yesterday's judgment and the outcome of these referendums if they are passed.
However, that is no reason to not do them. Those challenges are not insurmountable. They will be challenging but, unfortunately, when it comes to constitutional law in the courts, litigation plays an important role. I hope that when people who are bona fide locus standi and have a proper case, with help and guidance on the finer points, even if the plaintiffs go down in the Supreme Court, they should not be followed for costs by the State. Indeed, there are times when an application for costs for that vital clarification, even if it is in favour of the State when it is delivered, should be an exception to the rule of costs. In conclusion, there is no diminution to the family unit but we are helping tens of thousands of other members of society and giving them some recognition for once. In doing so, we are reflecting our values in terms of equality in a more inclusive and updated way.
I will take Senator Keogan next. I thank Senator Seery Kearney for yielding to the Senator.
I thank the Senator very much. We heard yesterday and today tones and speeches on the referendums that this has got nothing to do with men. People are speaking very-----
I am sorry; before the Senator starts, I remind all Members that we have 30 minutes remaining.
Okay, I will only use a few minutes.
I was not referring to the Senator at all just in case she thinks I was.
This is nothing to do with men-----
(Interruptions).
I will not take too long. It has nothing to do with men. We are talking down-----
Nobody here has said anything-----
I am sorry; Senator Keogan without interruption, please.
I have listened to this whole debate and nobody-----
I am sorry, Senator.
No, I just think it is misrepresentative. Nobody is here today saying-----
I am sorry, Senator. Through the Chair, please.
-----it has nothing to do with men.
Senator Keogan without interruption, please.
I apologise for interrupting Senator Ruane earlier.
It has everything to do with men.
Senator Keogan without interruption, please.
Absolutely. I want to remind the women in this Chamber that they are going to face the electorate of the Seanad and Dáil and the European elections. They will be seeking votes from half the population who are men.
I am sorry-----
That is irrelevant to the Bill.
I am sorry; the Senator is completely misrepresenting-----
Is the Senator making a point of order?
Has Senator Keogan been listening to the debate? On a point of order, she is misleading the Chamber.
The family-----
The Senator may make the point of order where she stands, please.
On a point of order, I feel that Senator Keogan is-----
I am sorry-----
On a point of order-----
You know, I-----
One second, Senator Keogan. I am sorry; a point of order has been raised. I want to hear the point of order.
I am not giving way.
The Senator has no choice.
Okay.
A point of order has been raised.
On a point of order, I have sat through the debate today. I watched the debate yesterday.
What is the point of order?
The point of order is that the Senator is misleading the Chamber and giving the impression-----
That is not a point of order. She is making-----
It is a point of order. She is misleading the Chamber.
Senator Keogan is entitled to make her contribution. Senator Ruane may disagree with what she is saying-----
She is misleading the Chamber. I do not disagree.
I do not think she-----
It is an actual lie if we are going to be honest.
The Senator cannot use that term. Withdraw that remark, please.
I am sorry; Senator Keogan is lying on the Seanad record-----
The Senator cannot use that term.
-----and making the impression that some people here-----
The Senator has to withdraw that-----
-----have not included men in the conversation.
I ask Senator Ruane to withdraw the remark, please.
I will not.
The Senator is accusing a Member of-----
I am sorry-----
She has made a charge. That is not-----
I will not.
She cannot do that.
Nobody here-----
The Senator cannot do that.
I spoke about my daughter's fathers here today-----
Senator Ruane-----
-----and the importance of their role in her life. I am not having this woman sit here and make out-----
Senator Ruane-----
-----that some conversation has happened that has not happened.
Senator, I am just trying to be fair to everybody. You cannot use that terminology in the Chamber. Senator Keogan or any other Member is entitled, as you are, to put his or her case in the Chamber as Senators have all done today. I have heard most of the debate here and in my office.
There is a difference between putting your case-----
I understand-----
-----and misrepresenting people's contributions in the Chamber. They are very different.
I ask Senator Ruane to please withdraw the charge.
I will not. If Senator Keogan withdraws her misrepresentation of Members' comments, I will withdraw it, but she is making out that people have said things that they have not said. It is not fair because we all have families. We all have people invested in this and we all have men in our lives. It is so dishonest. It is actually unethical, and I would plead with-----
Please, Senator Ruane.
I would plead with my colleague, Senator Keogan, to actually rethink what she just said.
Senator Keogan may resume her contribution.
I thank the Cathaoirleach very much.
On a point of order-----
I will let Senator Keogan speak for one second. Does Senator Mullen want to make a point of order now?
Yes. What is the rule if somebody accuses somebody?
I will consult on the rules.
It has to apply equally across the House. That is all. I know the Cathaoirleach would want that.
Shall I continue?
Yes, please.
I will never disrespect anybody's lived experience. I will not do that. However, I hear women from the Government side who seek to evoke women's experiences in the Magdalen laundries or mother and baby homes. What did they do to help those women all those months ago when they were emailing in their thousands about problems with the still undelivered redress scheme? They did nothing; absolutely nothing. They were silent when the chips were down, but those women are useful to them now again when they use their names in vain for their own purposes during this debate. They know in their hearts and souls that those women's experience did not come from the Constitution nor were they prescribed by it.
The family enjoys special status within the Constitution, but what discrimination does a child in an unmarried family face now? We are trying this afternoon to fix attitudes from the bad old days that no longer exist in 2024. My only problem is with the phrase "durable relationships". Marriage is a legal document. What happens when durable relationships end? There is no legal document. If non-married couples break up, will they need to pay maintenance for members of their durable relationship even if they are not biologically related? Is this possible? The problem is that we do not know.
I have a family. I might be divorced, but I still consider my family to be called a family, just like Senator McGreehan, who is not married, and, indeed, Senator Ruane. They consider their families to be a family unit. We should be strengthening that family unit. We should be supporting people who are on their own and giving them more supports. Maybe if we did, we would not have the mental health issues this country is facing with its children and teenagers today. For me, therefore, the issue is durable relationships. We do not know what it is. The Judiciary does not know what it is. Before it leave these gates, we should know what that phrase means. Unfortunately, this amendment to the Constitution does not define that and for me it is a big "No".
Go raibh maith agat. I call Senator Seery Kearney.
I thank the Cathaoirleach. I thought for a horrible moment I would not get a chance. I have heard both men and women represented here today.
When we look at the Constitution, we must consider that it is the overarching document by which the Supreme Court has to make decisions in the interpretation of legislation. Therefore, any legislation that goes through this House gets the presumption of constitutionality. However, that presumption has to be tested in the court and yesterday we saw that. We saw a situation where a piece of it was tested and found to be wanting in its scope. The Supreme Court has to view things through the confines of the Constitution in whatever way the Constitution sets out and within the parameters as set out and voted on by the people of Ireland. Therefore, what it says is really important because anything that we put through this House could ultimately have its constitutionality tested in the Supreme Court. We have had situations like yesterday's decision where a blatant injustice is tested and articulated to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court made a very good and comprehensive decision in that regard. However, it did not do it with the definition of family and marriage because it is not there. It had to be creative.
It had to find another route to justice.
The Supreme Court should not have to do that. Any of us looking at that case yesterday would have said that man should have had the financial support of the State, and we will still have to legislate for him to have it because yesterday did not mean he is a cent richer today - he is not. The Supreme Court had to look at it through the lens of the equality of children, which is a recent amendment to the Constitution, and the rights of a parent or the obligations and duties of a parent. It looked at it through that relationship, not through the horizontal relationship of him to his partner of 20 years. We have to think about the fact the Constitution sets the boundaries upon which the Supreme Court can make decisions. Yes, it does point to where there are lacunae and gaps and it will challenge the Legislature to say that it needs to take action, but it is still confined and does not have the latitude to speak justly to a situation if it is not there in the Constitution.
What we have never had, to my knowledge, although I stand to be corrected, is somebody who goes on and says that the corollary of yesterday's decision is along the lines of “I am married and, therefore, I should have this right and nobody else should.” That would just not be something that would go to the Supreme Court. However, we stand at risk of something like that happening if we do not amend the Constitution. If we do not broaden the definition of family, we stand to have that elevated hierarchy of the institution of marriage standing and being the reason for injustice to other families.
That does happen. The State does go in and argue that particular instances in front of it are not deserving of the constitutional protections of the family. The unenumerated rights within the Constitution require that kind of interpretation. With regard to a family's right to privacy, they do not have it if they are not a constitutional family. We need to address this. We need to ensure that the Supreme Court has that scope to include all permutations of family.
While, in 1937, it was perhaps unimaginable to have families not founded on marriage, the fact is that, today, a lot of children are born without their parents being married, and we heard yesterday the percentage is 42%. They have enduring relationships. Mr. O'Meara was in a relationship for 20 years. There is no less of a commitment and people do not necessarily feel they have to be married in order to have committed and durable relationships. If we look at the implications of what we mean by durable relationships and if we look back to the Children and Family Relationships Act, we see that it contains criteria on living together for guardianship and on circumstances of cohabitation. There are signposts there as to what we mean by durable relationships. It is to be obtuse to say that it can be stretched beyond possibility. I stand as a mother of a child, and even when this comes in, we will not be considered a constitutional family, and we will require legislation to do that.
We need to consider the consequences that flow from making this change. The first one that strikes me concerns the Family Home Protection Act 1976, which defines the family home as a dwelling in which a married couple resides. Where two people buy a home together or have a home together, where one contributes and it might be in the other’s name, we need to ensure that that family home is protected whether it is founded on marriage or not. On that note, being married does not guarantee someone the assets out of the marriage in the situation of the dissolution of that marriage. There are many circumstances, which were well articulated by Senator Ruane, where no maintenance is paid, where access orders are not honoured and where people blatantly give up jobs. Through counselling over the years, counselling of women in particular, I know of situations where men gave up their jobs to be assured they would not be found to have to contribute towards the mortgage and where families found themselves destitute due to deliberate acts of badness. They were married but it did not protect them from that at all.
I do not do family law because the immorality of some of the actions by people in the break-up of relationships is just so horrific. I think I was briefed once, and I shouted at my client because I found him abhorrent. It was not for me.
There are decisions that have to be made. We need to consider the scope and amend social welfare and a whole heap of things regarding pensions, access and assets. All of that needs to be done. If we look at the pure definition of durability, it is to be able to withstand wear and pressure and to be hard-wearing. There is a longitudinal view of it. We cannot be casual about it. We need to interpret it with sensibility. There are things there that give us all the signposts we need for how this will be interpreted but any clarification from the Minister would be useful and good.
I am old enough, just about, to remember when the Berlin Wall came down - that is how old I am. It was 30 June 1991 and that day has been a national holiday in Hungary since then. It was the day the last member of the Soviet army left Hungary and went back to Russia. That day is a national holiday in Hungary because it was such a significant day in their history. It would have been unthinkable at that time to imagine that the day would come when the Prime Minister of Hungary would block aid to Ukraine in the face of Russian hostilities against that country. It would have been unthinkable over the years, given the progress there, that Poland would start moving against LGBT people. It would have been unthinkable that a member state of the European Union would undermine its own Supreme Court and the rule of law. All of these things in Hungary and Poland were utterly unthinkable and we do not know what the future holds.
The worst-case scenario for me, as a member of Fine Gael, is not necessarily a Sinn Féin government; it is a right-wing government in this country. It is all of those prospects and possibilities that come around through the manipulation of people through social media. There are unthinkable sites of arson around our country. Having a Constitution that is robust and reflects the values of our people at a time when we are inclusive, generous and progressive is very important and it means the undoing of that cannot be simply done by any permutation of a future government in our country. The fact that it has to go to the people to change the definition of family is very important and it would have to go to the people again if ever we were to take an extreme right or left turn.
This is something that we need to do and we need to do it urgently. We need to reflect family as we know it in our country. It needs to be elastic. The durability needs to be elastic to reflect family as we know it to be and as is the lived experience across all of our society. I support this absolutely.
As regards NGOs, I do not know what sort of committees Senator Mullen sits on.
Too many of them.
Too many for all of us. I sit on the housing committee and the children committee. I can tell the Senator that many an NGO has come in and absolutely torn the Government apart because that is democracy. In fact, we fund them to do it at times in order to point out where our deficiencies are. The idea that their loyalty or “Yes” votes can be bought or coerced is one that I find objectionable - it is obscene, to be perfectly honest.
I was-----
We are pressed for time so I ask for Members’ co-operation.
I dispute that and I also honour the agency of the NGOs in this regard. I have nothing more to say. Everything has been said at this stage.
Senator Conway is next. We are running out of time and I am conscious that we have not heard from the Minister yet. Will Members be precise and brief so we can get everybody in before the end of the time, which is fast approaching?
I will not delay the House at all. Senator Seery Kearney has eloquently articulated a lot of my viewpoints. I think this referendum is important. My only regret in many ways is that it is happening so late in the cycle of the Government. It should have happened earlier, two or three years ago had it been possible. As a matter of fact, this referendum should have happened a long time ago. We must bear in mind that the Constitution we are working from was drafted in 1937. The world we now live in, compared to the world in 1937, is fundamentally different. There are fundamentally different values. There is a fundamentally different respect structure out there that did not exist. I have listened to a lot of the contributions today and I listened to Senator Ruane's contribution earlier this afternoon. A lot of what she said I very much agree with. There is a notion that this referendum will go against women. She rightly pointed out how many times women are mentioned in the Constitution. I think twice is correct. I think it is abhorrent to a large extent. The Constitution does not respect equality at all. If I had my way, we would tear up the Constitution and write a new one, but that is not going to happen.
I would not bet against it.
We would just write a completely new Constitution that is fair and respectful to everybody. However, the people will ultimately decide this. What better way to demonstrate democracy than to have a referendum and let people decide it. In my closing comment I will say one thing, which is let us have a respectful engagement and debate. That is what the people deserve. I sincerely hope the Minister will lead the way in articulating the case for a "Yes" vote.
On a point of order, I ask Senator Ruane to reflect and withdraw her comment.
I withdraw the comment of calling Senator Keogan a liar. What I do stand over-----
She should not repeat it again, but I thank her for withdrawing.
(Interruptions).
I want to emphasis the inaccuracy. It is unfortunate because, whether or not you are on the opposition side of this referendum-----
Can I-----
Yes, this relates to the amendment.
I want to get the Minister to come in as well. I will call him by 3.45 p.m. at the latest.
On the amendments and discussions today, it was a conversation that did nothing but include men in the conversation. I spoke about my father and wanting to be associated directly with him as my father. I spoke about my children's fathers and in the absence of something happening to me I want them to be directly recognised in our Constitution, as they should be, as their family. All the conversation around unmarried couple is inclusive of men. They are literally part of the conversation. I think it is inaccurate to do that because it is unfair to the actual amendments. Our amendment states, "between parent and child". It does not state, "between mother and child". If this were about removing men from any conversation these amendments would say mother and child. They clearly say that durable relationship should explicitly state, " parent and child". The relationship is about durable relationships regardless of the gender of the parent. We need to emphasis that is what it is about.
I pick up on the point about the deconstruction of marriage. I do not believe we should deconstruct marriage at all. I am happy it is still there. I am fine with that. I think a large portion of society believes in marriage and wants to get married. I think it only right they are also represented within the Constitution. However, I suppose I take issue with comments that are also shameful in nature, when there are throwaway comments about criminality and marriage. I have just spoken about the shame we felt growing up in unmarried families. There is now a connection made, saying that you are more likely to be involved in criminality if you come from a single parent household. That was the assertion made today. It is very unfortunate-----
That was not the assertion. Now, who is misrepresenting?
Senator Ruane, without interruption.
Criminality is directly related to poverty-----
Hear, hear.
-----and poverty in one-parent households is directly related to the failure of the State and to the lack of recognition within the Constitution. Criminality is related to poverty. Poverty has been a failure of the State in terms of supporting single-parent households for generations. If you want to make the real connections, you can.
All true, but marriage-----
Go raibh maith agat.
It is not about marriage.
I thank Members. Senator Conway's final remarks were about a debate that is respectful and tolerant. Can we keep that in mind?
The people would expect that we have a respectful debate.
We conclude in six minutes.
I thank the Senators for their amendments and for their detailed contributions this afternoon. The majority of the amendments put forward relate to the section of the Bill that deals with the proposals in Article 41.1.1° of the Constitution. I will restate the amendment being proposed by the Government: "The State recognises the Family, whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships, as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law." In this new restatement of Article 41.1.1°, married families are a constitutional family, but durable relationships represent a constitutional family too. The reason for this proposal is to expand that definition of family under the Constitution solely beyond the marital family to include cohabitants with or without children, and to include one-parent families. The approach proposed by the Government will acknowledge a broader and more inclusive definition of the family. However, we want to do that up front. We want to do it at the very start of the article on the family - Article 41.1.1° - where is set out that specific recognition of the family. This is a deliberate choice. We know, and it has just been spoken about, that some of the most marginalised families in our country's past and present are one-parent families. The Government thinks it is important to have this positive and upfront recognition of the concept of family in Article 41, and stating that it is no longer limited to the marital family but also encompasses other durable and committed relationships - namely, one-parent families, cohabiting couples, and any children they have.
This broadening of the definition of the family also requires an amendment to Article 41.3.1°. Section 1(1)(c) of the Bill proposes inserting an amended version of Article 41.3.1° that omits the words, "on which the family is founded." That article will read that, "The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage and to protect it against attack." The reason for this is that, to date, that article has always been read by the courts as saying that the constitutionally protected family can only be the marital family. That is why we need to delink those two concepts. However, it is to delink and not deconstruct. I will come back to the issue of deconstruct.
The proposed amendments from Senator Hoey and her colleagues have much the same effect, but they have a slightly different take in drafting. I again appreciate the agreement in intent. I do not propose to accept this particular amendment because I believe that clear statement up front in Article 41.1.1° is important in terms of recognition. A number of Senators have proposed formulations involving the words, "including, but not limited to". I think they were Senator Higgins and Senator Ruane and her group, and separately Senator Mullen. I understand some of the amendments in that particular group reflect a concern about the term "durable relationships", and in particular whether it covers the parent-child relationship. I make it clear that the clear intention of the term "durable relationship" is that it covers the parent-child relationship. That is clearly supported by the fact that the term "family" used in Article 41 is also used in Article 42.1, again in a context where it clearly encapsulates a parent-child relationship.
As such, this definition is far more expansive than a definition from EU law of a similar term relevant to the EU citizenship directive. The Government's proposed wording of "durable relationships" would expand the constitutional concept of a family to cohabitants, with or without children, as well as to one-parent families. I appreciate that some Senators may have wanted to go even further; to open some more non-exhaustive wording in terms of the proposed amendment. While this may be the intention of the proposed amendments, it is the case that Article 41 already sets out clear guardrails which describe and delimit the concept of the Constitution within the family. These describe the family as a fundamental unit group of society, as a moral institution and as a necessary basis for social order. These existing guardrails within Article 41 are powerful concepts.
They are not guardrails; they are descriptions.
With respect, they are.
The inclusion of the term "durable relationships" builds in a consistent way on those current guardrails. Rather than taking the approach of solely deleting the words on which the family is founded from Article 41.3.1° or using a formulation of "including but not limited to", the approach further reinforces that concept of the family as a fundamental unit group in society. It is one that is founded on strength, stability and commitment.
I note that Senator McDowell's amendment seeks to further qualify the term "durable relationships" in terms of introducing the term "between two persons as may be prescribed by law". In respect of durable relationships being prescribed by law, the concern is that this approach would involve differential treatment between families founded on marriage and those not founded on marriage. The former would automatically fall within the constitutional definition and protection. The latter would only do so if they satisfied relevant statutory provisions.
Exactly. That was the intention.
Respectfully, we disagree with that approach.
Importantly, the second element of the Senator's proposal is the restriction of the term "durable relationships" to one that only arises between two people. We have a real concern with that in the situation where there is a one-parent family with more than one child or there is a cohabiting couple with children. We have always been clear that those family relationships have to be protected within what we are trying to propose here. I feel that the outcome of the Senator's particular proposal limiting to two-parent families would completely undermine that effort to make sure-----
It would run the risk of excluding-----
Senator Mullen, the Minister did not interrupt you. You had plenty of time. You know the rules of the House better than most.
That would fundamentally undermine efforts to protect families where there is a parent and two children
I ask the Minister to please conclude.
I want to speak on the point about the special protection of marriage, one that remains constitutionally recognised if this amendment is passed. That special protection remains there. It remains the basis for the State to make distinctions in the areas of inheritance and taxation. I would like to quote from what the Chief Justice said yesterday.
Please conclude. I appreciate the Minister having been perhaps the most patient person in the Chamber.
I can assure the Minister we do not like the guillotine either.
I have listened patiently to the Senator and to everybody else and I would expect the same courtesy in return.
The Chief Justice stated yesterday "It seems clear that it is not constitutionally impermissible to distinguish per se between marriage and a long-term relationship, not least because the Constitution makes that distinction itself." Contrary to what Senator Mullen said, marriage is not being deconstructed. That was a statement of our superior courts yesterday in terms of the existing distinction that can be made. As to whether what we are proposing, in terms of the amendment to the definition of "Family", will change that, I do not believe it will. What the family amendment is doing is fundamentally broadening the definition of the constitutional family. It does not take away from the special protection of marriage that exists in the Constitution. I think it is fundamentally important to say that.
To conclude, Senator McDowell stated that the O'Meara case shows why this referendum is not needed. Yes, the O'Mearas won on the basis of an inconsistency in terms of the application of the social welfare legislation. However, the Supreme Court was clear in the case that the definition of the family in the Irish constitution is only one based on marriage. It took a deferential approach and said it would not redefine it. It stated it was up to the Irish people, to we the electorate, to make that change. On 8 March, we have the opportunity to make the change. We have the opportunity to include cohabitees and one-parent families within the protection of our Constitution, but just as importantly within the recognition of our Constitution. This is an important and meaningful change and one that is long overdue.
Ó tharla an t-am a cheadaítear le haghaidh na díospóireachta seo a bheith caite, ní foláir dom an cheist seo a leanas a chur de réir ordú an lae seo ón Seanad: "Go bhfuil leasú Uimh. 3 arna chur ar neamhní leis seo i gcoiste; go bhfuil ailt 1 agus 2 arna chomhaontú leis seo i gcoiste; go n-aontaítear leis seo leis an Sceideal i gcoiste; go n-aontaítear leis an Réamhrá agus leis an Teideal leis seo i gcoiste: go dtuairiscítear an Bille gan leasú dá réir sin don Teach; go ndéantar leis seo an Ceathrú Céim a chríochnú; go ndéantar leis seo an Bille a ghlacadh chun an breithniú deiridh a dhéanamh air; agus go ndéantar leis seo an Bille a rith."
The time permitted for this debate having expired, I am required to put the following question in accordance with the order of the Seanad of this day: "That amendment No. 3 is hereby negatived in committee; that sections 1 and 2 are hereby agreed to in committee; that the Schedule is hereby agreed to in committee; that the Preamble and the Title are hereby agreed to in committee; that the Bill is accordingly reported to the House without amendment; that Fourth Stage is hereby completed; that the Bill is hereby received for final consideration; and that the Bill is hereby passed."
Cuireadh an cheist.
Question put.
Will the Senators who are claiming a division please rise?
Sheas na Seanadóirí Craughwell, Keogan, McDowell agus Mullen.
Senators Craughwell, Keogan, McDowell and Mullen rose.
As there are fewer than five Senators, I declare the question carried. The names of the Senators who rose will be recorded in the Official Report and Journal of Proceedings of the Seanad.