Irish Examiner view: Law needs to recognise the nurturing role of fathers

A father who is married to the mother of his child has automatic guardianship rights but an unmarried father doesn’t

Treoir CEO Damien Peelo said Ireland continues to lag behind most EU countries by not affording unmarried fathers an entitlement to automatic guardianship of their children. 

In his poem ‘Digging’, Seamus Heaney recalls watching his father “stooping in rhythm through potato drills” and how this inspired him to write: “Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests./I’ll dig with it.”

Fathers — the good ones — can inspire as well as love and nurture their children. 

They are revered in our art, literature, and our music, yet they are treated harshly by the law, under which they have no entitlement to automatic guardianship of their children. 

Under current Irish law, unmarried fathers are not allowed to be parents, except in very limited circumstances.

According to Treoir, the national federation of services for unmarried parents and their children, guardianship is a right. 

“Ireland continues to lag behind most EU countries in affording unmarried fathers with this important parental responsibility from the registration of their child’s birth,” Treoir CEO Damien Peelo said at the organisation’s annual conference on Tuesday. 

He is absolutely right. Under Irish law, the importance of motherhood is a given; rarely tested, and never contradicted.

Yet the significance of fatherhood is often ignored or overlooked, leading to heartache not just for fathers but also for their children.

Considering how far we have come in advancing social legislation, it is shameful that in Ireland, unmarried fathers do not have guardianship rights even if their name is on their child’s birth certificate.

The rights of parents to guardianship are set down in Section 6 of the 1964 Guardianship of Infants Act. 

Guardianship rights entitle a parent to make important decisions for their child, including deciding on the child’s religion, education, medical treatment, and where he or she lives. 

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All mothers, irrespective of whether they are married or unmarried, have automatic guardianship. 

A father who is married to the mother of his child also has automatic guardianship rights but an unmarried father doesn’t.

The 2015 Children and Family Relationships Act modified matters by allowing a single father to be a guardian if he has lived with the child’s mother for a certain period but, in the event of a disagreement with the mother, he may still have to go to court to assert that right.

Considering the ‘mother knows best’ default position taken by many judges in family law courts, there is no guarantee he will succeed.

Denying automatic guardianship rights to fathers is out of step with international best practice and with the situation in the North, where the law was changed in 2002 acknowledging fathers’ rights.

In extending the rights of fathers, the Government would be acknowledging the important role played by them and the profound influence they have on the social, emotional, and intellectual development of a child. 

Guardianship isn’t about possession; it’s about nurture.

Allowing same-sex couples to marry required a referendum and a consensus. To address this inequality all that is needed is a little compassion and commonsense.