A short amendment July 7, 2010
Posted by Tomboktu in Inequality.trackback
In among the amendments to the snappily retitled “Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Bill 2009″ is the following proposal to amend Section 109 of the Bill:
61. In page 60, subsection (1), line 42, to delete “shared home” and substitute “family home”.
I’m no lawyer, and I haven’t gone hunting out the wording of Section 109, so I don’t know if there is a legal difference between a ‘family home’ and a ‘shared home’, but it seems to me that this amendment said in just 14 words what the whole Bill is all about.
Tomboktu, that’s a most interesting find. I think you’re right too.
Its to reduce the prospect of the Supreme Court striking down the legislation. Same-sex couples will still have all the rights that married couples have under the Family Home Protection Act (1976). Having such legal protection for gay couples is, for me, what the bill is all about.
Ivana Bacik is one of the proposers of the amendment, so I did suppose that if there is a legal significance in the difference, she would be behind that. However, even if there was no legal difference, I think the symbolism of the wording says so much.
[Having said that, I am confused by your comment, Andrew. Would the amendment not push the bill nearer to granting an equivalence for civil partnership to marriage that John Hanafin, Rónán Mullen, Labhras Ó Morchú, Feargal Quinn and Jim Walsh so fear will ruin society, and therefore make it more likely to be in breach of the Constitutional provisions on the family that Ahern has been keen not to offend?]
David Norris picked up on that in his second stage speech –