Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): If members are content, Hansard will report this item.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): We were due to have an oral briefing from the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People (NICCY), but its representatives cannot appear today. Correspondence on the commissioner's submission can be found on page 352 of the meeting pack. The issues identified in the submission have been added to the evidence base.

The Clerk will give us an update.

The Committee Clerk: We are down to the few remaining oral briefings. We had anticipated having the briefing from NICCY representatives, but they are not able to attend. We will have briefings from two of the humanist bodies. Of all the stakeholders, they indicated the most interest in some of the issues, so those briefings might allow the Committee to explore and get to the bottom of concerns about the criteria for bodies to be brought into the system and enabled to register marriages. Members will recall that any criteria set for those bodies will come through the Assembly. It will be done by draft affirmative resolution, so members will have the opportunity to scrutinise that as an entirely separate piece of work, but it will be useful for the Committee's report to hear what the humanists are saying.

As regards further briefings, we are probably finished. We may well — I will probably regret saying this — be able to bring in the report a bit ahead of the deadline, which would be ideal to clear some space for consideration of the Budget. Obviously, we have the briefing organised with the humanists, but, if members are content and comfortable with it, we are probably at the end of the briefings. We can then switch to the other workstreams.

Ms Forsythe: I agree with that. We have had a substantial number of written responses, and they cover most of the perspectives, so it is not that we are lacking input, feedback or positions. Most people and organisations have been content to submit written responses. It is not that we have not been getting many responses. We are in a good place to pull it together, so, yes, I am in total support of that idea, if we have the capacity to do it.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): For the purposes of the Committee record, given that there was some talk of no-fault divorce being included in this, did we ever get an explanation or reference as to why it was not?

The Committee Clerk: Ultimately, it would have been difficult to draft a single Bill. It was going to be split into two Bills. Members will recall that we had an early briefing from the civil law reform division, which remains a very, very small unit. Those representatives expressed reservations about whether the unit could complete the potential workload that was being suggested for the mandate. Legislation on divorce has, effectively, fallen by the wayside because of timescales. I think that the last time we had representatives from the civil law reform division in, they indicated that, simply following the common process, and if everything went to the timescale, you would need at least six months to get a Bill to a point at which it can be introduced. We have now tipped beyond that. We have now had official confirmation from the Department that a Bill will not come, nor will we see public bodies legislation or the private Member's Bill from Stewart Dickson. None of those will arrive, so we can stand down on those, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): For the record and for the sake of completeness, given that this is a civil law marriage Bill, as it were, it might be worth asking whether members are content for the Department to tell us what progress there has been on the legislation on no-fault divorce so that we can put that in our report, just so that we know where it is, or where it is not, for the purposes of the next mandate.

The Committee Clerk: For the next Committee.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Yes, and whether deliberations were to include it or not, just so that we have a paper trail for our successors. If members are content, we will find out what happened with no-fault divorce, whether it was going to be included and whether the resources simply did not allow for it.