State moves toward legal protection for civil partnerships

THE Government is about to take the first step towards providing legal protection for civil partnerships with the establishment of a new working group to advise on the issue.

Yesterday’s Cabinet meeting agreed that the Department of Justice would establish the working group and instruct it to prepare an options paper for the Government.

The paper would outline possible options towards introducing the first ever legal structure and definition for cohabiting couples. Those options would have to stop short of amending the Constitution’s definition of the family, since the Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution has ruled out a referendum on the issue.

A Government spokesperson last night said the working group would not “go anywhere near” the issue of same-sex partnerships. “They will just look at the options and see what they can do to give a legal basis to partnership,” the spokesperson said.

In January, the Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution concluded that any attempt to alter the Constitution’s definition of the family would cause “deep and long-standing division” in society.

Instead the committee reached a split decision to recommend legislative change to regularise the status of 77,000 cohabiting couples.

However, Labour, Sinn Féin and the Green Party all opposed the committee’s decision not to recommend a referendum to give same-sex couples and non-marital families the same status as marriage.

The move was heavily criticised by gay and civil rights groups, which argued that it was widening the gap between straight and gay couples.

Religious groups, however, believed the committee was going too far by proposing a deviation from the marriage-based family.