Marriage breakdown has increased fivefold

YOUR columnist Fergus Finlay (September 18) does his best to be fair to the recent report from the Iona Institute on marriage breakdown.

However, he accuses the report of scaremongering. I attended the conference at which the report was presented and it seems to me this accusation cannot be reasonably sustained.

No matter which way you look at the marriage breakdown figures in Census 2006, and on which the institute’s report is based, you arrive at a total of 198,593 adults who have suffered a broken marriage.