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The Children and Family Relationships Bill.
The new legislation, which will be published on Thursday, has been broadly welcomed by political parties and children’s rights groups. It seeks to extends guardianship, custody and adoption rights to different types of families – including same-sex couples.
Leo Varadkar was among those to state the bill and May’s Marriage Equality Referendum are two separate issues.
Speaking on Claire Byrne Live, the Health Minister said that the new law and the upcoming bill on surrogacy are “about children in the main”.
Most of the people who avail of assisted human reproduction or surrogacy, or most of the people who are in the family courts, are actually heterosexual couples. So to try and turn that into some sort of same sex or gay issue I think is wrong.
Not everyone agrees, however.
Mothers and Fathers Matter has said the bill “would promote arrangements where children are intentionally denied either a mother or a father”.
Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has said this isn’t the case, stating that the new law “acknowledges just how much family life has changed in recent decades”.
The Government hopes to pass the bill by 24 March, just weeks before the same-sex marriage referendum – leading many to conflate the two.
Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, who advised the government while the bill was being drafted, told Morning Ireland family law hasn’t been significantly updated in decades.
She said the Oireachtas can enact the legislation “irrespective of any referendum”, describing it and the same-sex marriage vote as two complex and separate issues regarding family.
Bill or no bill, it’s clear there’s a long road of campaigning ahead for both the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ sides. Will it impact how you vote in May?
Leaders’ Questions can often be a rather predictable affair, but the language used was rather interesting yesterday.
There was “claptrap” and an Alice in Wonderland reference, before Enda Kenny took a pop at Gerry Adams’ penchant for trampolining.
All in a day’s work in the Dáil.
Originally published: 9am
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