It’s Civil Partnership Bill time again. This time, it’s the committee stage. Maman Poulet explains about this stage of the legislative process:

The Committee stage is where amendments are tabled and debated. This will take place over a number of days, return to the Dáil for report stage where amendments notified are debated and voted on and the Bill is then passed as amended and sent to the Seanad.

So, it’s a Dáil Committee which is looking at and debating the proposed amendments. To help prep you for the debate, the proposed amendments are available already on the Oireachtas website here.

The committee for this Bill is the Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women’s Rights (which contains no women, you may notice..). It’s also the Committee which was bombarded by letters and petitions from conservative religious crazies. We’ll see what influence, if any, they’ve wielded.

The Committee is due to get started at 10:00am, Wednesday, 24th March 2010.

To tune in:

• The debate will be streamed live from Committee Room 3 on the Oireachtas website here.

• A Live Blog has once again been set up by the tireless Maman Poulet here. The Live Blog is accessible for anyone to comment directly, or else automatically via Twitter when you include the hashtag “#cpbill“.

In other news: the cabinet reshuffle

Meanwhile, today we learned of the cabinet reshuffle and of who will be taking up new Ministerial posts. Some items to note for the gays, including LGBT young people:

Mary Coughlan is now Minister for Education and Science; Pat Carey has responsibility for Equality (now in the Communities and Gaeltacht Department); Éamon Ó Cuiv is now Minister for Social & Family Affairs.

I’m not too familiar with Carey’s and Ó Cuiv’s records. But we should all know Sweary Mary Coughlan from her time as Minister for Social & Family Affairs when she passed legislation in 2004 to bar same-sex couples from a range of social welfare entitlements (even though unmarried opposite-sex couples were not barred). This was a few months after a couple challenged her Department’s discriminatory guidelines on bus passes. The Department settled. (You see, if the discrimination is in guidelines or some such, it’s illegal; but if it’s in legislation it’s not illegal. Clever, that.) As far as I’m aware, the bar still exists.

I’m sure LGBT pupils will be delighted to hear that a woman like that has ultimate responsibility for their education and well-being in schools.

Update: Coughlan to launch GLEN publication

Oh yes, and as it happens, a couple of hours after the Committee starts its discussions on civil partnerships, that same Mary Coughlan is due to launch a report on diversity in the workplace by GLEN a few doors down Kildare Street. Bizarre. (Although, given that the flyer lists her as Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, we may need to wait and see whether it’s her or the new Minister for the Enterprise Batt O’Keeffe.)

Update 2: Some of the proposed amendments that will be discussed today
(24th March 2010, 9:50am)

Charlie Flanagan, TD (FG) wants the legislation to be called the “Civil Partnership and Cohabitants Act”.  He does, however, want it to come into force 3 months after the passing of the Act, rather than the if-but-maybe piecemeal provisions that currently exist in the Bill.

Brendan Howlin, TD (Lab) proposes an amendment in relation to court declarations of civil partnership status, where a partner has died. Instead of the current provision requiring that the deceased have resided continuously in Ireland for one year immediately before the date of their death, Howlin’s amendment would mean that it is sufficient to have resided continuously for one year at any time.

Charlie Flanagan also seeks certainty in relation to the recognition of foreign relationships which are legally recognised in their jurisdictions (the Civil Partnership Bill transforms such relationships into Civil Partnerships, even for instance where the original legal status of the relationship is marriage).  The Current wording of the Bill provides that the Minister “may” pass an order to recognise such foreign relationships; Flanagan’s amendment would change this to “shall, on the commencement of this Act.”

Howlin also proposes an amendment to allow recognition of foreign relationships which pre-date enactment of the legislation (in other words, for the Act to have retrospective effect).

Oddly, an amendment proposed by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform proposes to delete a paragraph of the Bill which specifies the “particulars to be entered in Register of Civil Partners.” I’m not sure if that means that the same information required on marriage certificates will be used or what.  Anyone able to clarify this?

Flanagan seeks to insert a new section which exempts civil partners from stamp duty or fees where a joint tenancy is created in the family home.

In relation to inheritance, between them Howlin and Flanagan seek to delete sections of the Bill which currently make a surviving civil partner’s automatic inheritance (where the deceased civil partner has died without a will) of two-thirds of the deceased’s estate subject to the children of the deceased applying to a court to have provision made for them out of the estate. (No such proviso or qualification which these TDs are seeking to delete appears to exist in relation to married spouses under the 1965 Succession Act – I’m open to correction on that.)

In a similar vein, both TDs oppose a similar “subject to” qualification in relation to the provision for children in relation to inheritance.  The section to which such provision is “subject to” is opposed by Howlin, and Flanagan proposes to replace it with wording reflecting that applicable to married spouses that appears in the Succession Act.  (Again no such qualification appears to exist for married spouses.)

Oddly, the Minister seeks to delete a section of the Bill which sets out how the Pensions Act 1990 (as amended) applies to civil partners.  He also seeks to delete a paragraph of the Bill in relation to issuing of guidelines on the operation of the Pensions Act after the Civil Partnership legislation comes into force.  (It appears that other amendments to the Pensions Act contained in the Civil Partnership Bill do remain.)

In relation to dissolution of a civil partnership, Flanagan has proposed adding in the line “there is no reasonable prospect of reconciliation between the civil partners.”  It appears a thoughtful addition, considering that the Bill as it currently stands allows a court to dissolve a civil partnership solely on two criteria of living apart for a certain amount of time and provision being made for the partners.

• Most previous posts on the topic of civil partnership and of marriage equality can be found here and here.

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