Fears of ‘chaos’ after vote on equal marriage

A senior civil servant predicted chaos in the system if Church leaders followed through on a threat to stop registering marriages after the marriage equality referendum passed.

Registrar General Kieran Feely, who is in charge of managing the State’s marriage registration system, warned officials in the Department of Social Protection that there needed to be a contingency plan based on a “worst-case scenario” after marriage was opened to gay couples.

For a wedding to be legally recognised it must be solemnised by a person approved to do so by the Registrar General. Currently around 4,452 of the 5,855 approved solemnisers are Catholic priests and 107 are civil registrars. According to the Central Statistics Office, 13,072, or 59%, of the 22,045 marriages registered in 2014 were Roman Catholic marriage ceremonies.

While the HSE is responsible for the day-to-day delivery of the Civil Registration Service, Minister Joan Burton’s department is in charge of policy in the area.

Within days of media reports highlighting the Catholic Church’s stance the minister asked her staff for a note on the implications of the Church withdrawing from the marriage registration process.

At the time a spokesman for the Catholic Bishops said that if the referendum was passed, the bishops may decide to separate their role in marriage from the State’s role. Later in May the Catholic Primate Archbishop Eamon Martin said: “We haven’t made up our mind… clearly it is an issue for us.”

In a briefing note to department officials Mr Feely said the resulting extra workload would require additional staff, extra accommodation and an updated computer system.

He said one scenario was the Church would solemnise any marriages already booked. He said the other scenario was of the Church setting an immediate cut-off date after which it would no longer register the marriage.

Referring to the latter more extreme case he said: “It must be anticipated that considerable chaos would ensue. There needs to be contingency planning, based on a worst-case scenario. Should the Catholic Church decline to solemnise marriages after the end of June 2015, the workload falling on civil registrars immediately goes from 532 planned marriages in July 2015 to 2,141.” When, where and how are these extra marriages to get solemnised?” Mr Feely asked.

In his note, Mr Feely said he was assuming that Church weddings would go ahead as planned and the HSE — and not the priest — would have to take up the task of making these marriages official.

“It is assumed that most Catholic ceremonies will proceed as planned, as it is likely that hotel receptions and honeymoons will have been booked and paid for (partially, at least), guests invited and other arrangements made.”

He said it was also assumed these Church weddings would be solemnised at the local registrar’s office during normal office hours Monday to Friday.

Since the referendum was overwhelmingly passed in May, Archbishop Martin said the Church “would like to continue solemnising marriages”.

He said the bishops would have to examine any new legislation governing marriage and added: “We’ll monitor the situation to see if it’s possible for us to continue, and I’m hopeful that it will be possible”.