More and more lesbians and gay men are becoming parents in Ireland – both by having children themselves and/or by taking on parenting responsibilities for children they are not biologically linked to. The concept of family has progressed here too and today Irish families exist in all different shapes and sizes.

Unfortunately Irish laws and provision of services have not kept up to date in the area of parenting. As a result, same sex relationships are discriminated against especially compared to married heterosexual relationships. The most worrying aspect to this situation is that children in same sex parented households are disadvantaged by the State against children parented by married people.

And legislators seem reluctant to update the law to ensure that all people and relationships are treated on an equal footing. At the end of 2006 for instance the All Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution – Family recommended against amending the constitution to update how a family is defined and against other changes that have been proposed, aimed at addressing inequality.

Lesbians and gay men are discriminated regarding parenting in a number of ways including:

Same sex couples cannot access assisted reproduction services such as donor insemination and in vitro fertilisation in Ireland. Couples are forced to travel to the UK and elsewhere – adding considerably to the costs and stress involved.

Heterosexual couples who use assisted reproduction services such as donor insemination are able to both register as parents to any child eventually born. Lesbian couples in exactly the same circumstances cannot both register – denying the child a legal relationship with one of their parents and creating a whole range of potential problems in later years.

Lesbians and gay men, along with other unmarried people, can apply as a single person to adopt a child but will not be considered with their partner as a couple (because they are not married, an option not open to them). Given that LGB people can foster as a couple - and that fostering precedes most adoptions in Ireland – this anomaly needs to be addressed urgently.

Many lesbians and gay men have children from earlier heterosexual relationships but they raise these children in a same –sex parented family. Their partner regularly becomes a parent in everything but the law. In such circumstances the child is left disadvantaged to a child in similar circumstances – but parented by heterosexuals.