Vol. 333 No. 7
asked the Minister for Justice whether it is intended to introduce legislation to amend those provisions in the Courts Act, 1981, which will enable District Courts to determine custody proceedings as on and from 12 May 1982 and which will from that date deprive the High Court of jurisdiction to determine such proceedings.
154.
asked the Minister for Justice whether legislation will be introduced as a matter of urgency to abolish the concept of illegitimacy and to place all children in a position of legal equality.
155.
asked the Minister for Justice whether it is intended to introduce legislation to permit the adoption of legitimate children; and when it will be introduced.
With the permission of the Ceann Comhairle, I propose to take Questions Nos. 153, 154 and 155 together.
These three questions all relate to possible legislation and I think it may be helpful to the House if I make a brief general statement on that issue. What I have to say is not new — it follows the pattern of what has been said in the past when similar kinds of questions were asked.
Parliamentary questions about possible legislation present particular problems for the Minister for Justice because of the very wide range of his responsibilities which cover virtually the entire area of the criminal law and large areas of the civil law. Accordingly the range of possible parliamentary questions about legislation is almost unlimited. Nearly all legislation on such issues requires extensive preparatory work and all legislation promoted by a member of the Government requires Government approval. It is not practical to deal with the issues involved between the time a question is put down and the time it is answered in the House. When Government approval is given for an announcement about legislation to be made, then it is made without delay in the normal course.
It follows from this that I would very rarely be able at Question Time to make a useful statement about pending legislation because either I would not have Government approval for an announcement or, if I had, the announcement would already have been made.
That is the situation with regard to the three questions I am now dealing with, all of which raise substantial issues of policy and indeed a number of legal and practical issues as well. If and according as proposals for legislation, either on any of the matters mentioned or on any other major issues, reach the stage where the Government have approved of their being publicised, that will be done in the normal way.
Even though it is stating the obvious, perhaps I should add, formally, that of course all the matters raised in the questions will be considered as soon as possible.
May I add, in order to avoid any feeling that I might be responding to different questions in a discriminatory way, that what I have said now does not necessarily apply, for instance, to a question on a point of a technical character or one on which, because of some particular circumstance, I may be able to reply without specific reference to the Government, but this would be exceptional.
