A landmark action by a lesbian couple to have their Canadian marriage recognised in Ireland and to have the Revenue Commissioners treat them under the tax Acts in the same way as a married couple is ready to proceed in October, the High Court was told yesterday.
Ivana Bacik, for Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan, told Mr Justice John Quirke her side had filed all necessary particulars sought and the case was ready to proceed. She added it would run for about three weeks and involve some 11 witnesses.
In November 2004, when granting leave for the action to be brought, Mr Justice Liam McKechnie said the case was not just about tax bands and the extent of allowances. The institution of marriage would be at the core of it, he said.
Ms Zappone and Ms Gilligan contend the refusal of the Revenue to recognise them as a married couple in Irish law for tax purposes breaches their rights under the Constitution and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. They claim discrimination on the grounds of gender and/or sexual orientation and breaches of their rights to marry and to respect of their private and family life.
The case is against the Revenue Commissioners, Ireland and the Attorney General, with the Human Rights Commission, of which Ms Zappone is a member, as a notice party. Orders are being sought that would compel the State and Revenue to recognise the couple's Canadian marriage and treat them as a married couple for the purposes of the tax laws. They are also seeking damages.
The case arose after Ms Zappone, a public policy research consultant, and Ms Gilligan, an academic, married in Vancouver, Canada, on September 13th, 2003.
On July 1st, 2004, the Revenue refused the couple's claim for the same allowances as a married couple under the Taxes Consolidation Acts. The Revenue argued that married couples relate only to "a husband" and "a wife" and that the Oxford English dictionary defined these as a married man and a married woman.
The couple claim there is no legal impediment in the Irish Constitution to recognition of a same-sex marriage.