The Constitution was written at a time when society only recognised and respected one kind of family, the family based on marriage. First, the amendment would formally de-link marriage and family within Article 41.3.1° by amending the wording from "The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded, and to protect it against attack" to "The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage and to protect it against attack".
It is proposed that the definition of the family should be extended to families based on marriage and-or other durable relationships. If this change is made, families based on "other durable relationships" will be given the same status as marriage and will be entitled to the same protection as marriage at the moment.
Key terms by TF-IDF across 8,024 words from 17 speakers. The summary quotes the highest-scoring sentences verbatim — nothing is paraphrased.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Paul Daly and Mary Seery Kearney; Níl, Senators Michael McDowell and Rónán Mullen.
Party shown is the one each member held on 2024-01-22, frozen by a dated join — not their party today. The Oireachtas API publishes no date of birth and returns an empty gender field for every member in this period, so no age or gender breakdown is shown.