The Gazette 1993

GAZETTE

NOVEMBER 1993

example that in a recent Dundalk Circuit Court hearing there had been 70 cases on the family law list. Despite the very hard work of the presiding judge only a tiny portion of the cases were heard. She mentioned the absence of facilities in the court, that people spent whole days in freezing corridors, with more people herded outside, waiting for their case to come on. Mary O'Toole said that this was simply not good enough particularly for parties to family law cases who were frequently suffering distress and who were, after all, tax paying citizens. The establishment of proper family law courts was essential. In recent years there had been a 300% increase in the number of people ' looking for judicial separations, and if and when divorce became permissible, j this number would double instantly. j The Minister's promise of 52 legal aid solicitors was a drop in the ocean - it | would only be two per county, she said. In a criminal aid case a person could get a solicitor in 24 hours, and this was as it should be, since people's constitutional rights were at issue. However, family law litigants, whose lives were often falling apart, also had to face a whole range of constitutional issues, for example, their entitlement to the family home, their entitlement to access to their children, succession and pension rights, how their income was going to be dispersed. j | Mary O'Toole said that legal aid solicitors were a credit to their profession but the current scheme of Civil Legal Aid and the pilot scheme recently introduced by the Minister for Equality & Law Reform were hopelessly inadequate. The afternoon session of the seminar, chaired by the Hon. Ms. Justice Susan Denham , Judge of the Supreme Court, focused on the interplay between the | legal profession and the various sup- port services available in the area of marital breakdown. Kieran McGrath, j Senior Social Worker at the Children's j Hospital in Temple Street, told the seminar that much of social workers' time in marital breakdown cases was taken up trying to keep clients out of i Interplay with social services

At the seminar were l-r: Kieran McGrath, Social Worker; Mary O'Toole, BL; Brian Sheridan, Law Society Council; Mervyn Taylor, TD, Minister for Equality & Law Reform; Michael V. O'Mahony, then Senior Vice President, Law Society; Mary Lloyd, Mediator, and Dr. Gerry Byrne, Child Psychiatrist.

the adversarial court system. A marked trend had been noted recently, especially by probation officers, of more and more family law cases going forward for trial rather than being resolved voluntarily either through the mediation service of informally. This had placed a great deal of pressure on service generally and especially on the probation officers. Kieran McGrath said that there was a need to introduce a system for super- vising parental access to children in custody and access disputes, where there are grounds to suspect that there is a risk of physical/sexual/emotional abuse to the children involved. Its absence constituted a major gap in support services to the courts. The ultimate losers were of course children, for even when a parent posed a risk of some sort, children still needed to be able to have regular, predictable and safe contact with that parent. "Members of the public are generally not aware of the complexity and degree of conflict between spouses all too often found in custody/access disputes. This lack of public awareness is due both to a lack of a proper court reporting system and the in camera rule restricting media reports. There is an argument, therefore, both for better law reporting structure and more information for the media about family cases that would still protect the anonymity of those involved," he argued. Kieran McGrath called for greater reporting of family law cases.

Mediation

Mary Lloyd, a former solicitor, who now works as a mediator, addressed the seminar on the importance of mediation for couples undergoing separation. Mary Lloyd said that throughout the life cycle there were expected crisis points such as death, but marriage breakdown was an unexpected crisis. People going through a separation experienced the same feelings of grief and loss as they did on a death, and the children of the marriage were similarly affected. Mary Lloyd explained the mediation process. One spouse approached the mediation service and then the other spouse was asked to confirm that he or she would participate. This was usually the first agreement between the couple following the decision to separate. The mediation process involved introductory sessions, then I exploring the issues between the couple, developing options, a process of bargaining and negotiation, followed by decision making. Then the agreement was put in writing and often after that there was a session with the children. Part of the process was to help the couple accept the finality of their former relationship and the need to restructure their future relationship, particularly with regard to their children. A key question that was put to the couple was "what kind of relationship do you think you will have with the children? What I (Continued

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