Martin is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of men who feel let down by the family-law system. Separated from his wife, he has been fighting through the courts for nearly five years to ensure that he gets to see his five-year-old son regularly. He is one of those campaigning through Parental Equality and other, similar organisations for changes in the family-law system, to allow fathers greater access to and involvement with their children, following the break-up of relationships with the mothers.

"Our laws were made to handle a situation where a woman was being punched, beaten, kicked and ill-treated, and children were being left hungry while a father was spending his wages in a bar," he says. "I have no doubt that this happened, that it continues to happen and that the laws have been effective in dealing with the culprits. However, a law can be passed to protect a woman and can later be used as a weapon against a man, without any attention being paid to the possibility that the husband might be falsely accused and might be a good husband and father."

What seems to get lost in this argument are the rights of the child, a point that concerns Geoffrey Shannon, who lectures in family law at the Law School, the education department of the Law Society of Ireland, and is a member of the organisation's family-law committee. "Access is a right of the child, not the parent. That is at the centre of various international conventions we have signed up to, but that we have not ratified in spirit. The child must have an input into the proceedings."

The European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, both ratified by the Republic, hold that a child has a right to a relationship with both parents. Because the Constitution upholds the rights of "the family based on marriage", however, the rights of married parents, rather than those of children, have been seen as paramount. When relationships break up, this can result in battles over custody of the children, who become pawns in a battle between the adults.

Very acrimonious disputes can drive the parties further apart and make it almost impossible for children to have normal relationships with both of their parents. This can start with a barring order. Interim orders are issued ex parte; that is, without the person accused of violence - usually the man - being heard, or even present, in court. They are emergency measures, aimed at protecting threatened spouses, and no judge would want to refuse one and discover later that the applicant had been injured, or worse.

Evidence has to be heard to support their continuance, and two out of every five applications for permanent barring orders are refused. But family-law courts are clogged up: the next available date for a hearing could be many weeks away, by which time a new status quo, with the mother and children in the house and the father excluded, could be in place.

In the UK, children stay with their mothers after 90 per cent of divorces, and the same figure probably applies here. If the parents' relationship is very bad, the issue of access to children can become a battleground.

"I've been in court with a couple of cases where a million and one reasons have been given why the children can't go to see the father," says Muriel Walls, a family-law specialist at McCann FitzGerald, in Dublin. "It's soul-destroying, trying to catalogue it all and show a deliberate pattern of frustrating the court order. What is the court to do? The ultimate sanction is to put the mother in jail, thus depriving the children of the other parent. What they have started to do in England where there is obstruction is to give custody to the non-custodial parent."

The mingling of the issue of custody of and access to children with other issues is wrong, according to Shannon. "At the moment, the children issues are dealt with along with property issues," he says. "It makes the child a bargaining tool, and it's wrong. The issues involving children are best dealt with before the case gets to court."

He says the State's incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights could help place a child's right to access to both parents at the centre of family-law proceedings. The Human Rights Commission in Ireland will have a role in overseeing the implementation of the rights guaranteed by the convention, but Shannon believes the long-promised ombudsman for children would be the best forum in which to sort out disputes.

Parental Equality campaigns for joint custody, which Walls says can work in the right conditions. "If it makes fathers feel better, they could have it in most cases," she says. "But where is the child's primary home? It can work with a week-on, week-off regime, but that may not be possible."

Under the Family Law (Divorce) Act of 1996, practitioners must draw the attention of divorcing parties to mediation, although mediation is not obligatory before going to court.

"In some cases, mediation might be excellent for parenting issues but not great for the financial issues," says Walls. "Generally, mediators like to do it all together. A lot of mediation in the United States only deals with children issues."

Shannon also favours a mandatory education process for separating couples. "There is empirical evidence that, once people realised the consequences, they were more reluctant to engage in adversarial behaviour," he says.

This has been the experience of the Canadian province of Alberta, where divorcing couples with children under 16 are required to attend a six-hour seminar on issues affecting the children. Although people were initially upset that attendance was compulsory, satisfaction proved very high, and a six-month follow-up found that most issues had been resolved and that conflict was lower.

But all of this takes money. There are no support mechanisms for children in the Irish family-law courts. There are no social-welfare officers attached to the courts. An ad hoc system of child assessment by probation officers was discontinued because the Government neither legislated nor provided resources for a dedicated system.

"Unless there is a child-safety issue involved, you have to pay for an assessment privately, which costs about £1,000," says Walls. "Then you have to wait about two months to even get one. By then, a new status quo has been established, and untold damage can be done." The system needs a drastic rethink, she says.

"We should, as a society, be talking about parenting. We should acknowledge that we have different roles, different strengths. Employers have their role to play. A separation often happens at a very critical time in people's careers. The fact is that in a lot of Irish families, the structure that's set up is that he's on a bigger salary, because women with young children are either at home full-time or in a job-share.

"Will he job-share to be with the kids? Will she go back to work full-time, and never catch up with her peers? A total reorganisation is needed. We have to say: Stop the lights! This is the collateral damage. We have to put in the resources, with more judges, other services, like mediation, to defuse a lot of it, welfare officers attached to the court.

"And there must be an alternative method of dispute resolution for issues involving children, so that people can get into a system before a pattern is built up of mistrust and breach of arrangements."

Parental Equality is at 01-8725222, with branches around the Republic. Its website is at www.iol.ie/~pe