Child Poverty
Dail Éireann — 2025-04-08
============================================================

Gary Gannon (SD), Dublin Central

On the topic of child well-being, I wish to discuss an immensely cruel anomaly whereby a parent who has been convicted of unlawfully killing the other parent of a child retains his or her guardianship of that child. Retention of guardianship in this context means that the convicted person must be informed about the child's situation, consulted in major decisions being taken for the child and can influence the child's placement. A Bill was brought to Cabinet in respect of Valerie's law. When will that Bill be brought before the Dáil? Research demonstrates that the best outcomes for children in these terrible situations is to be placed with the victim's family not under the perpetrator's control.

---

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/2025-04-08/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:42+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-04-08