Law on guardianship - Unmarried fathers no legal rights

Every child should be entitled to know his or her father and mother, but there is a danger that the unmarried father could be totally excluded from the lives of their children due to outdated family law practices.

A third of all children are born outside marriage in this country, and half of the parents of those children do not live together.

People may not like or approve of those statistics but they are a facet of modern Irish society and it is, therefore, an issue that must be faced without further delay. Some 2,448 unmarried fathers applied for guardianship of their children in 2008. This was an increase of 140% over the year 2000.