THE GOVERNMENT is planning to introduce legislation to legitimise
about 3,000 marriages carried out illegally at foreign embassies in
Ireland.
Minister for Social Protection Éamon Ó Cuív said
yesterday his officials were working on legislation to resolve the
problem, which sparked a major diplomatic row last year with several EU
states.
“What we are trying to look at is what happens to people
who thought in good faith they got married legitimately here and our law
doesn’t provide for such marriages . . . It will ultimately be a matter
for Oireachtas na hÉireann to decide but I do think we have to deal
with the issue,” he said.
Several EU states were performing
marriages at their embassies up until March last year when the
Government wrote to all foreign embassies to alert them to the fact that
such ceremonies are invalid and illegal under Irish law.
This
followed concerns that significant numbers of marriage ceremonies were
being performed for citizens from new EU states, who were working in the
country.
It is understood the Polish embassy carried out 1,000 wedding
ceremonies and the Lithuanian embassy carried out at least 100 weddings.
The
2004 Civil Registration Act requires all wedding ceremonies to be
performed by an authorised registrar and to take place in a registered
building, open to the public, to be legal and valid.
Diplomats
from several EU states have expressed concern that unless the Government
retrospectively legitimises the weddings, the couples’ marriages –
which have already been recognised in their home countries – may have to
be deregistered.
Under international rules, ceremonies deemed illegal
in the country they are performed cannot be recognised in the home
state, according to the diplomats.
Several couples who contacted
The Irish Times last year said the ruling was causing problems when they
sought to register their children in the names of both parents at the
General Registry Office.
Some couples were advised to register
children in the name of a single parent, which they feared could lead to
complex custody, taxation and inheritance issues.
Mr Ó Cuív said
all embassy marriages had now stopped and he had sought legal advice on
legitimising those weddings that had taken place. He said the new
legislation would not allow for embassy marriages in the future.
It
is understood the legislation could be modelled on the Lourdes Marriage
Act 1972, which provided for the registration of marriages that took
place in Lourdes, France, before its enactment.
This was to
resolve the difficulty of a significant group of Irish citizens who had
married in Lourdes over the years, according to the rites and ceremonies
of the Catholic Church, but who subsequently found that because the
local civil procedures had not been observed, these marriages were not
registerable in France.
Mr Ó Cuív said the legislation could also
include measures to tackle so-called sham marriages between EU citizens
and non-EU citizens for the purposes of circumventing immigration law.
He said bolstering the powers of marriage registrars was being
considered.
“Our big concern here is that people who obviously
don’t know each other and don’t share a language get married here for
reasons other than legal bona fide marriages reasons,” he said.
New
legislation would have to be fair by dealing with the abuses without
stopping other people from legitimately getting married.
A third
strand of the legislation would update the rules regarding the
registration of Irish citizens who died while abroad, Mr Ó Cuív added.
The deaths of Irish citizens abroad was currently only registered in
Ireland if it took place on a ship or aircraft or if they were a serving
member of the Garda or Defence Forces.
Mr Ó Cuív said the registrar general was looking at this issue to see if Irish deaths abroad could be registered at home.
SIC: IT/IE