Madam, - I welcome the positive comments of Tony Williams, PRO of the Dublin South-East branch of the Progressive Democrats (May 2nd), though I think he is unnecessarily nitpicking when crossing swords with previous correspondents Bernard Cantillon and Richie Keane (April 25th) concerning the title of my Bill. It was originally envisaged as a "Domestic Partnership Bill" but then changed to Civil Partnership Bill as it evolved. The title is not as important as the contents.
However, I am happy to have the opportunity to confirm that Minister for Justice Michael McDowell should be absolved from any malignant intention during the debate on my Bill in Seanad Éireann. The whole thing arose through a regrettable misunderstanding.
On the morning of the debate I discovered a few minutes before the Order of Business that an amendment had been tabled in the name of the Government senators which would have had the effect of voting the bill down. I was outraged by this and created a major row on the Order of Business. This led to negotiations throughout the day and as a result I agreed to take part in the debate that night on condition that the bill would not be voted down. This was agreed to.
I subsequently discovered that the text sent to the Seanad office by the Department of Justice had used the phrase that Seanad Éireann "postpones the second reading of the bill" until certain other reports were completed by the Law Reform Commission and the Constitutional Review Committee. This was changed by the administrative staff of the House from "postpones" to "declines a second reading" which would have had the effect of removing the Bill from the Order Paper. They did this because they believed that a motion of this kind could either be passed or rejected by the House. In fact I now understand that a mechanism does exist for the postponing of such a motion but it also requires a specific time-frame.
Mr McDowell in fact was as usual helpful, informative and gracious during the debate and I am happy to place this on the public record. There is inevitably a popular assumption in such cases that there is conspiratorial ill will on the part of the Government. This was not the case in this instance.
However, Mr Williams is quite incorrect when he says, "The Bill provided that the parties to a civil partnership should have the same rights and entitlements as parties to a marriage and that phrasing put Senator Norris's Bill on a direct collision course with the Constitution". This is not the case; it was made plain by legal advice available to and quoted by the Law Reform Commission, and also made available to me, which states that a constitutional problem would arise only if parties to a registered partnership were given greater rights than parties to a marriage. This does not arise in the case of my Bill.
I am revising the Bill in the light of many helpful comments made by the Minister and by my colleagues during the debate and I will present it in a new form in due course. - Yours, etc,
Senator DAVID NORRIS, Seanad Éireann, Dublin 2.