GAY AND lesbian couples will be able to register their relationships with the State for the first time and avail of greater protection in areas such as pensions, inheritance and tax, under new Government proposals.
However, civil partnerships will not provide any right for same-sex couples to be considered as joint adoptive parents, despite a strong campaign by gay equality groups.
The Cabinet yesterday published the heads of a new Civil Partnership Bill and the final legislation should become law within a year.
Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said gay marriage could not be conceded because it would fall foul of the Constitution. Such couples will also not be able to adopt.
Under the legislation, gay and lesbian couples will be able to register their relationship before a registrar, as long as the partners are over 18 and not involved in any other unions. The courts, equally, will be able to dissolve relationships as long as the partners have lived apart for two of the previous three years.
Attorney General Paul Gallagher, Mr Ahern said, has repeatedly warned that nothing could be done in the legislation "that would equate" civil registration, or cohabitation with marriage.
"The view is that anything that would provide, or try to replicate 'marriage' in this legislation would not stand constitutional scrutiny," he told The Irish Times.
The planned legislation also introduces major changes for same-sex and opposite-sex cohabiting couples who choose not to formalise their relationships, but who have been living together for at least three years, or two years if they have children.
It envisages a court-administered "safety net scheme" to ensure that a partner is not left in poverty by the ending of a relationship. It will also allow recognition of cohabitant agreements - similar to pre-nuptial agreements - enabling cohabitants to regulate their joint financial affairs.
The changes will have major implications for tens of thousands of cohabiting couples, who now comprise almost 12 per cent of all families in Ireland according to the 2006 census.
The proposed measures attracted a mixed response from gay rights groups yesterday.
The Gay and Lesbian Equality Network welcomed the proposed legislation as "comprehensive", but said it failed to provide protection for gay and lesbian parents and their children.
"This is a reform whose time has come. All political parties have played a role in getting us to this point and there is huge public support for change," said Kieran Rose of the network.
Legal recognition has not been given to the many same-sex couples, in particular women, who are parenting children together. "This is of critical importance to parents and their children and we urge the Government to bring forward proposals to address this legal gap," Mr Rose said.
The Irish Timesunderstands that the Green Party unsucessfully pressed for some form of legal recognition on this point.
However, the party's justice spokesman Ciarán Cuffe TD, said the Bill allowed for "ancillary" orders which would allow the courts to adjudicate on issues such as financial provision for children in such circumstances.
The Marriage Equality group complained that the legislation is being dubbed as "marriage-like", but marriage entitlements afforded to heterosexual couples will be denied to lesbian and gay couples under the proposed scheme.
Moninne Griffith of Marriage Equality commented: "We already know that under civil partnership, the children of lesbian and gay mums and dads will be left in limbo with no constitutional or legal recognition, or protection. Therefore, civil partnership from the outset is not marriage-like, it is separate and it reinforces inequality."
Civil partnerships: main points
• Create a new legal relationship for same-sex couples that may end only on the death of a partner or dissolution by a court;
• Give legal effect to a range of property, financial and other matters consequent on civil partnership in relation to maintenance, shared home, succession, taxation, social welfare schemes and pensions;
• Provide cohabiting couples (both same-sex and opposite-sex couples) with the safety net of a redress scheme in the event of economic vulnerability at the end of their relationship;
• Give legal certainty to agreements regulating the financial affairs of cohabitants enabling them, if they so choose, to opt out of the redress scheme.
For further information on the heads of the new Civil Partnership Bill, visit www.justice.ie