The shambles and uncertainty that is Irish politics at the moment may effect the passage of legislation on civil partnerships due to be debated before the General Election.
The Finance Bill published last Friday was due to be amended during the committee stage to contain provisions for the recognition of Civil Partnerships within tax systems. The bill does not contain the proposals already and the Department of Finance reassured campaigners (GLEN) that the amendments would be put by the Minister during the committee stage of the bill through the Oireachtas.
Before the withdrawal of the Green Party from Government today and Brian Cowen’s resignation as FF party leader yesterday it seemed that three to four weeks would be spent on the legislation and enough time would be given to debate.
However it now seems that if the timetable is guillotined that this will not happen and there will be a delay in same sex couples in civil partnerships being recognised in tax law. It is understood ceremonies can go ahead as planned and other recognitions would stand.
Thanks for bringing attention to this issue because it seems to have gone almost completely unnoticed in the mainstream media.
Same-Sex couples have had to wait long enough to receive the most basic financial protections contained in the CP Bill and it’s completely unacceptable for gay people to be “thrown under the bus” because of the political theatrics going on among all the parties (both government and opposition) right now.
The situation needs to be urgently clarified – If the tax issues are not dealt with in this Finance Bill then when will they be addressed and will the changes be backdated to when CP became law? Surely we won’t have to wait until next year’s Budget for this to happen!
This is extremely frustrating. I had hoped that we could move on to marriage equality and raise it as an issue during the election campaign but it now seems that we won’t even have a fully functioning CP law in place before polling day.