In the course of this short debate we will hear numerous arguments in favour of and against the provision of divorce law in Ireland. Tonight, I have only to look at the Order Paper to see one reason for divorce legislation: directly following this debate the House will begin to debate the Domicile and Recognition of Foreign Divorces Bill, 1985. That Bill will be before the House to clear up one of the many anomalies caused by the absence of divorce legislation here. It points once again to the legal tangle in which many families, and particularly women, find themselves.
That brings me to the main theme of my contribution, which is how divorce relates to women in particular. One of the main arguments consistently advanced against the introduction of divorce is that it represents a threat to women. We are constantly told that women would suffer directly from the introduction of divorce. The status of the family, of which women are the centre because of their caring role for children, would be undermined, we are told. Women, we have been told, would run a higher risk of desertion by erring husbands who would have the convenient facility of divorce at their disposal. We are told that divorce would heighten the risk of increased poverty and insecurity for women and for their children.
Basic to that argument is the notion that woman is the compliant spouse, woman's natural condition being seen as an emotional, sectional and financial dependant of her husband. That attitude seeks to exploit the vulnerability of women in society, where equality in all its aspects remains more an aspiration than a reality. It is an attitude that conveniently ignores the fact that marital breakdown occurs and that women already suffer its worst effects because of the absence of a coherent legal framework within which legal, financial and property issues may be resolved. It is a kind of attitude that assumes that if the State battens down the hatches by a complete prohibition on the availability of divorce, that prohibition in itself will underline the stability of the marriage relationship and act as a deterrent to spouses who might otherwise be tempted to stray.
Marital breakdown has caused serious problems in Ireland, entailing untold, undocumented suffering by women. Because of legal anomalies, such as the law relating to domicile, the absence of a mechanism in the State to dissolve marriages has left countless numbers of women in a legal limbo. There are instances of women being divorced abroad by their husbands but being unaware that their marriages had been dissolved for years after the event.
To say that the introduction of divorce would increase the rate of desertion is to ignore the steady rise in the numbers of desertions in the past ten years. About 15,000 Irishwomen have applied for the deserted wife's allowance or benefit since the introduction of the scheme. In 1984 there were 7,790 women receiving this support, 70 per cent of whom had children. The statistics available do not measure fully the extent of desertion because women under 40 years of age without children do not qualify for the allowance, and also because eligibility for the allowance is subject to a very rigid means test.
This argument ignores the sad reality for many women in Ireland. There is undocumented suffering by women in marriage. Those deserted are by no means the worst off. In many cases, desertion is a merciful end to years of terror, punishment and misery. As a woman public representative for more than 20 years I have had the confidence of women in my constituency and outside it and I have been shown all the marks of terrifying, brutal marriages — bruises, black eyes, broken fingers, burn marks. I have seen children in total terror, marked for life. I would judge that there are children who have been marked for life in what I would call the more civilised cases, where the fathers and mothers had not spoken to each other for years.
This is what the State is now being urged to continue to batten down the hatches on. While battening down those hatches we conveniently turn a blind eye to all the Irish style solutions to which people have to resort, such as divorces by husbands who have domicile abroad while up to now a wife is supposed to have domicile with her husband. The wife is left to cope with her children back in Ireland though she is supposed to be wherever the husband is. He gets a divorce. We ignore Mexican divorces, Haitian divorces, the Puerto Rican divorces — they may be few, but they are there — the deed poll changing of names, Catholic Church annulments and subsequent Catholic Church second weddings. These second marriages come to notice only if the couples of such marriages subsequently want to adopt children and they find that they cannot because they are not legally married.
As a party, Labour feel very strongly about this, and it is because we feel so strongly that we have introduced this Bill. All the remedies I have referred to we conveniently ignore, as we have ignored the views of the minority Churches with one exception, the Latter Day Saints, who are against the constitutional ban on divorce though, as a matter of internal discipline they may be against divorce itself. However, they are opposed to the constitutional ban. We have been told the Taoiseach requires further consultation. Nobody, certainly not us, is arguing against consultation at any time, but as the mover of the Bill emphasised last evening, consultation can take place side by side with the progress of the Bill through the Oireachtas. Therefore, the need for consultation is not a valid excuse for voting against the Bill. We will allow all the time that is needed for consultation but time is running out, it is not a plentiful commodity in the lifetime of this Government.
This subject has had a tediously long history in this Parliament. I moved a motion in 1980 seeking the establishment of an all-party Oireachtas committee to deal with the questions of support for marriage and marriage breakdown. About that time Deputy Noel Browne introduced a Bill and we had another some time later from the Workers' Party. We had an all-party report in 1967. We may not agree totally with what that recommended but it was there and it dealt with the subject. We had the recent all-party committee and we had Deputy Michael O'Leary's Bill. All the attempts to effect change in this area failed for one reason or another, but they brought the matter of marriage breakdown to the notice of Dáil and Seanad Éireann and to the notice of the people of Ireland over a long period. One measure was played off against another. We were always waiting for something. In the final analysis, no Government ever cared enough to have the courage to grasp the nettle of marriage breakdown.
I would ask the House not to repeat the old pattern on this Bill. Let us grasp the issue once and for all because time is not on our side now. I submit that all the arguments for and against the dissolution of marriage were weighted up and set down very carefully and explicitly, in so far as it is possible to do so, in the report of the Joint Committee on Marriage Breakdown. The committee recommended that a referendum be held. They recommended a referendum on a positive format, replacing Article 41.3.2 of the Constitution with a provision specifically authorising the Oireachtas to legislate for the dissolution of marriage.
The report stressed that the provision should place a duty on the State to protect the family and the institution of marriage. It stressed, too, that in the event of a referendum being approved by the people, there should not be divorce on demand and it stressed that the safeguard of the State's interest in fostering and protecting marriage and the family should be built into whatever provision would be substituted. It stressed that proper provision should be made for dependent spouses and children.
The committee gave very close and detailed consideration to over 700 submissions from interested parties and groups and heard much oral evidence over the period of 18 months so, while consultation can go on, one has to say that a great deal of consultation has already taken place. The time has come to proceed with this Bill on Second Stage and to engage in whatever consultation may be necessary during the latter stages of the measures.
The Labour Party's approach to this issue is not new. The fact that we sought an all-party committee in 1980 proves that. At each annual conference, each meeting, each occasion for debate, we have presented this as an item of great importance. We are not negative. We do not see this in isolation. We are concerned with protecting marriage but we are concerned too with providing a release for those whose marriages have failed beyond reprieve.
We were the first to speak of services aimed at reconciliation and protecting marriage. We were also the first to speak about properly structured family courts. We know, as everybody must know, that some marriages are beyond redemption. Some marriages are either non-existent in so far as the parties are separated, or they are sheer hell for one or both parties if they persist in their marriage. We know that extramarital, stable relationships have been set up. We know they are commonplace. I do not think there is any Deputy or any person in the country who does not know of a case or many cases of marriage breakdown. We hope that many marriages, with the services we are talking about, can be redeemed and put on a sound footing again, but we know there are others for whom the only solution is termination of marriage.
It is because of our concern for those people and our understanding of the hell in which they live on earth that we move this Bill. We know there are children who are placed outside the full protection of the law because of ambivalence in this area. Our first consideration must be for children and for their welfare. We are told by those who oppose this Bill that we must be concerned about the effect of divorce on children. I would ask people who make that case to identify for me the difference between the effects of divorce on children and the effects of nullity on children, on the effects of separation on children. In the day-to-day life of a child I cannot see what difference one makes that the other does not make.
My own contention is that a bad marriage, a marriage where violence is a regular feature, where parents are either fighting or not speaking to each other, has a much more detrimental effect on a child than any form of separation. Nothing is worse than constant turmoil and there are many hundreds and perhaps thousands of children in this State living in those conditions. I have met children who have been afraid to go to bed because of a drunken father or perhaps worse still a father who is not drunk but who is a bully. Those children have to live in those conditions and we sit here and turn a blind eye to that problem in our society as we have done year after year in this House. All these remedies are less detrimental to any child than the insistence that a child should live in a home where there is violence and where all the agencies of the State are precluded because it happens inside the door of a family home.
There is a clear majority of the population in favour of some change now. It very much depends on how questions are put to the population. While the Irish people would not in present circumstances or perhaps in any circumstances approve of freely available divorce, the vast majority of them realise that we have reached the stage where some steps must be taken. Consultations with the Churches can proceed while we are debating this Bill. We are all aware of the stance of the Catholic Church on this issue but there are many things which the Catholic Church, of which I am a member, has held to be morally wrong but which it has never suggested should be prohibited by the State. This issue comes into that category.
I appeal to the Taoiseach, and members of all parties, to support our Bill when a vote is taken on it next week. We will be amenable to holding consultations with any party after the Dáil has passed the Second Stage of the Bill. The committee system now operated by the Dáil is an ideal method for such consultations. The Labour Party have introduced this Bill because for years we have been interested in this subject. That interest arose from our concern for people and the problems and worries that affect them. There is no doubt that poverty, bad housing and poor education lead to difficulties in marriages. I am not saying that broken marriages exist exclusively among deprived people but remedies to broken marriages are more difficult to find for such people. Those who are better equipped financially find it easier to find a solution to such problems.
I appeal for support for our Bill on behalf of the many people who are living in misery. There has been stalling on this issue since I was first elected to this House. Successive Governments have failed to grasp this nettle. Deputies should be heartened by the fact that there is more public support for a change in the law in regard to divorce. We must take cognisance of the views of the public. Support has grown for a change in the law because the general public are more aware of the problem. We should not allow the problem to get any worse. We should play our part in trying to bring peace and happiness and a reason for living to those who are caught in this trap. I appeal for support for our measure.
