Sir, - Anne-Marie Blaney's intention (October 23rd) is clearly to reassure us that in opting to introduce divorce into Ireland we did not do so at the expense of generations of Irish children. Virtually all her comments are utterly irrelevant since the findings of any American study of the effects of "divorce" on children would be roughly equivalent to an Irish study on the effects of "separation" on children - especially since she nowhere takes into account the impact of parents, particularly non-custodial parents, starting second families.
The pro-divorce lobby in the referendum campaign did its best to persuade us that judicial separation did not already exist here - that we didn't already have "divorce without remarriage". They certainly succeeded with Ms Blaney. Most of the children for whom she foresees a "benign" or even "improved" situation after divorce, particularly where "abuse and violence" have been involved, would have been as well served by the separation as by the divorce of their parents. One imagines that spouses involved in such marriages would be among those least likely to find the prospect of remarriage especially appealing, and least likely to be deterred from seeking a formal separation because, prior to the referendum, remarriage was not an option.
Divorce - and particularly the no-fault, no-frills version we have adopted - encourages the breakdown of the very marriages in which children are almost certain to be in far better social, financial, and psychological situations if their parents stay together rather than part, and has few implications for those marriages where more harm may actually be done to children by their parents' attempts to keep the family intact than if they accepted that their marriages had failed. The latter were already catered for by our humane and sensible provisions for separation.
Our decision to introduce divorce was a selfish one. Ms Blaney should accept that. We should certainly not be trying, at this stage, to convince ourselves that we did it for the benefit of our children. - Yours, etc.,
William Hunt, Harold's Cross, Dublin 6W.