Thirty-ninth Amendment of the Constitution (The Family) Bill 2023: Committee and Remaining Stages Dail Éireann — 2024-01-17 ============================================================ Roderic O'Gorman (GP), Dublin West That issue has come up in some of the debate. So we are clear, such a relationship is not covered in the concept of durability and it is not covered in the expanded concept of the family we are seeking to protect. We have these guardrails already in the Constitution. Putting durability in there adds to that. It is important in a context where we are making a significant and meaningful change that people can understand it is a change to allow our Constitution to encompass serious relationships. Deputy Clarke made an interesting point about length of time versus seriousness of the relationship. That was discussed with regard to the use of the terms "durable" or "enduring". Enduring speaks to the length of time but durable speaks to the strength of the relationship as opposed to the duration of the particular relationship. It is to convey the density of that very committed relationship and the network of interacting----- --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2024-01-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:33+00:00 Sitting date: 2024-01-17