12 - The ‘Last Stretch of a Long Road’: The Family (Divorce) Law Act of 1996

Summary

The successful divorce referendum of 1995 was followed by numerous legal challenges, but much of the debate on the subsequent Family Law (Divorce) Bill of 1996 revealed a country coming to terms with the reality of marriage breakdown. However, any proposition that divorce reform marked the end of the country’s liberalisation was premature: Ireland still had to negotiate a myriad of social issues including abortion. The subsequent Family (Divorce) Law Act of 1996, bar minor and technical amendments, mirrored the draft bill presented to the country prior to the second referendum and the provisions of the act are considered in a comparative perspective. The rate of divorce in the post-reform era is also assessed on gender, religious and regional grounds; there was no flood of applications to divorce as many had predicted in the anti–divorce campaign. However, by the late 1990s the Irish divorce rate moved towards Western European norms. As Irish divorce rates stabilised, they proved that most of the qualms which both delayed divorce law reform and fuelled preoccupations with the ‘common good’ over the needs of the individual were inexorably flawed.