Guardianship of Infants and Child Care (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-24 ============================================================ Maria McCormack (SF), Labour Panel Sinn Féin welcomes the progression of this legislation. We are eager to work with the Minister to ensure it is as robust as possible. I want to start by paying tribute to Valerie, a woman who should have been turning 49 this year. As other Senators have mentioned, she was violently killed by her husband in 2019 when she was 41 years old. Valerie was a mother of three children, a caregiver and a professional therapist. My thoughts are with her children and all of her devastated family as we debate the various Stages of this legislation. I acknowledge Valerie's brother, David French, who is in the Gallery with Veronica today. David has worked tirelessly to highlight that the current legislation allows for people who kill their partners to retain guardianship of shared children. He and his family have fought tirelessly for seven years for change here and in so doing he has done society a huge service. He must be commended for his work, perseverance and determination. I thank all the campaign and advocacy groups for their amazing work on the ground with victims, survivors and families in the area of domestic abuse. I acknowledge Jason Poole and his family for fighting to create a domestic violence register, another important Bill, known as Jennie's law, coming through the Seanad at the moment. I would also like to mention a group - Victims' Voices - with which Deputy Matt Carthy and I have been working to bring forward the Victims of Sexual Violence Civil Protection Orders Bill. There are so many gaps in legislation which fail to protect mostly women, but not all women and children, in domestic violence situations. I am glad that some of these gaps are now finally being addressed. The legislation before us today will be known as Valerie's law. I gladly support the Bill but I feel there is still work to be done. The least we can do is make sure that we get it right. A number of issues were raised by David French during pre-legislative scrutiny. As we know, this has already been debated in the Dáil. We will be tabling those amendments again on Committee Stage. I hope the Minister will reconsider some of the Sinn Féin amendments, which were voted against in the Dáil and work with us on them in this Chamber. Although not necessarily part of this Bill, I would like to take the opportunity to raise another concern that I have relating to the newly established guardian ad litem national service announced yesterday. This will affect children who we are trying to protect in the legislation today. My colleague, Deputy Claire Kerrane, has been raising for months the removal of the guaranteed legal representation for guardians ad litem , GALs, who are the voice of children in child care court proceedings. Nobody to date, including the Minister who is bringing forward this change via amendment today, can say why this is being done. Deputy Kerrane has engaged extensively with the Association of Guardians ad Litem in Ireland, AGALI, the representative organisation for the majority of practising GALs in the State. They are extremely concerned about the removal of guaranteed legal representation. Picture a courtroom, with a GAL, the voice of the child, who may never have stood in a courtroom in his or her life, a parent with his or her legal representation, and Tusla, with its legal representation. How is it in the best interests of the child if the GAL is without legal representation? This move is not in the best interests of the child at the centre of these court proceedings and I believe that this move will do untold damage. I hope the Minister might be able to answer this for me. --- 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/seanad/2026-06-24/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-24