Government has approved the revised General Scheme for the Children and Family Relationships Bill which means that formal drafting of the legislation can now begin. The Bill aims to modernise family law to include parental rights for diverse family forms; establishing the best interests of the child as paramount in decisions on custody, access and guardianship; regulation of parentage issue in cases of assisted reproduction. Adjustments have been made to the Bill since its introduction by former Minister for Justice Alan Shatter, taking into account suggestions from the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality and the Ombudsman for Children.
Adoption provisions have been revised to enable both same-sex civil partners and cohabiting couples to apply jointly for adoption. Cohabiting couples would have to have been living together for three years to apply for a declaration of suitability to adopt. The Bill has also loosened the requirements for unmarried fathers’ guardianship rights of their children. The revised provision specifies that an unmarried father will automatically become guardian of his child if he lives with the child’s mother for at least 12 months, including 3 months following the child’s birth. Previously an unmarried father was required to live with the mother for 12 months prior to the birth of the child.
The Bill also has a new section ‘Safeguards to Preserve the Child’s Identity in Cases of Assisted Reproduction using Donor Gametes’. The section aims to protect the rights of children born through assisted reproduction and their right to trace their identity through accessing genetic information. The Bill will establish a new Donor-Conceived Register which will contain the genetic information of children born through assisted reproduction and prohibits anonymous donation.
The publication was welcomed by the Children’s Rights Alliance who had made a submission to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the rights of donor-conceived children. Additionally, the Bill puts children at the heart of family law reform and will address many forms of discrimination faced by children in non-marital families.’
However, one of the major omissions of the revised Scheme is the issue of surrogacy. All references to surrogacy have been removed from the Bill. In explaining the removal of the surrogacy provisions, Minister Fitzgerald explained that there was insufficient legal certainty on the constitutional rights between a birth mother and a genetic mother. The Government is awaiting the Supreme Court decision in the case of MR & Anor v An tArd Chláraitheoir & Ors which concerns an application by the genetic mother of twins, born in Ireland through a surrogacy arrangement, to be registered as their mother on the children's birth certificates. Click here for the High Court judgment. The hearing was held in February and a decision is due next month.
Click here to read the General Scheme of the Children and Family Relationships Bill.