The move has angered support groups acting on behalf of fathers who experience difficulties in getting access to their children. A decision to deny fathers the same rights to their children as mothers would be a breach of international and European treaties that Ireland has signed and ratified.
The Sunday Times has obtained a copy of the report from the all-party Oireachtas committee on the constitution, which is due to be launched by Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach, on Tuesday.
The report recommends that the definition of the family based on marriage should be maintained, reinforcing the Supreme Court’s view that the mother, not the father, continues to have sole constitutional rights to the child.
“The committee was affected by instances presented to it of how society seems to be disposed to treat the natural or birth father heartlessly,” the report states. “The committee’s decision not to extend an extended definition of the family means that the natural or birth father will not have constitutional rights as such vis-à-vis his child.”
Instead, the committee has opted to introduce a series of as yet unidentified legal procedures to allow for the “appropriate expression” of the rights of fathers under a new article on children to be placed into the constitution.
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“It is appalling that fathers’ rights have not been changed,” said Mary Cleary, director of Amen, which lobbied the committee for equal constitutional rights for fathers. “Fathers, like mothers, have a God-given right to enjoy their children. In this day and age it is disgraceful that a father has to beg a mother or a judge’s permission to see his child.”
The report has been branded a “woeful fudge” by some government figures. “It is poorly drafted, badly researched and fails to adapt to modern family trends,” said a source close to the committee.
“In addition, it shows a reckless disregard for a number of international treaties that Ireland has ratified. It has even ignored the pleas of the Family Support Agency, a government body, which argued the case for a broader definition of the family and an extension of rights to families other than the marital families,” the source said.
The committee’s proposals are at odds with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that children have a right to maintain personal relations with both parents, except if it is contrary to the child’s best interests.
It is also in defiance of article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to respect for private and family life, supporting a broad definition of the family.
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Apart from a right to education, children have no explicit rights under the constitution. A new clause will be inserted into article 41 of the constitution, granting all children — irrespective of birth, gender, race or religion — equality before the law. But this right of equality has already been granted in the Status of Children Act, 1987.
This week’s launch takes place days after police in London foiled an alleged plot by Fathers 4 Justice, a fathers’ rights group, to kidnap Leo Blair, the five-year-old son of the British prime minister.