In response to your comments on my blog, it’s not a question of whether I believe what Brian Lenihan says or not. It’s a question of whether what he says stands up to legal scrutiny.
Having looked into his (and the Attorney General’s) opinion that S. 7 of the Labour bill was possibly an unconstitutional delegation of power to a minister, I believe that he was almost certainly correct. This provision was key to the Labour bill as it was intended to do in one section what it took over 200 sections to do in the British Civil Partnership Act – amend all existing legislation to provide for civil unions without having any of these amendments discussed in the Dail.
As such, I believe he was right to say the Labour bill was at risk of being struck down by the Supreme Court for unconstitutionality.
Therefore, in my view it is better to put forward a Government bill that will not have the same risk of being struck down.

Roderic

Is there reason to hopel they will realise when the dust settles that abandoning so much principle for pragmatism upends the main reason many of their voters support them?

(BTW, see Stephen King’s column in today’s Irish Examiner.)

http://cuffestreet.blogspot.com/2007/11/civil-partnership.html

It was 2008 in his press release – and also as maman poulet pointed out somewhere – why do civil partnerships need a new “agency”

http://www.greenparty.ie/en/news/latest_news/greens_praise_govt_pledge_on_same_sex_unions