Lay wedding solemnisers oversee more cermonies

The recently published 2014 report of Registrar General, Kieran Feely, relies on speculation about ‘marriages of convenience’ based on unattributed ‘anecdotal evidence’ — as near to an oxymoron as one will get — for concluding that because civil marriages are increasing they are partly accounted for by marriages of convenience.

Effectively Mr Feely is, whether wittingly or not, casting a slur on the integrity of civil and what he calls secular solemnisers of marriage for allowing folk to marry to secure Irish nationality or rights of habitation here.

While the fraction of persons who follow up (€200 fee) notices of intention to marry with marriage has remained stubbornly about 80% where one of the parties is a foreigner of some sort, the report publishes no comparable data for when both parties are Irish citizens.