Can someone please explain to the government the concept of ‘joined up’ thinking?

On Tuesday the Department of Justice says it will be opting out of Brussels II/Rome II, yesterday the Governments Lawyers were saying that gay couples could not get married as marriage is special protection for opposite sex couples (subs. req.), that’s after they put up dubious witnesses to give evidence.

Today we hear that the Cabinet decided to give the male partner of a terminally ill gay man Adult Dependents Allowance in respect of the ill man’s entitlement to Invalidity benefit. The Equality Authority supported the man in his case by pointing out to the Department of Social and Family Affairs that under

 Section 2(2) of the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act 2005 allows the Minister to specify persons to be adult dependents. The Equality Authority contended that the Minister therefore has a discretion which may be exercised to specify the claimant and his partner as a couple and that the failure to exercise this discretion constituted discrimination and that the exercise or failure to exercise this discretion is amenable to review under the provisions of the Equal Status Acts.

 (From an Equality Authority Press Release)

In reply to the man’s claim which had been refused initially the Department said

‘having considered the circumstances of your situation, the Government have decided to process your application for qualified adult allowance and, on a without prejudice basis, to treat your partner on the same basis as the category of persons covered by the rules in force. Accordingly, provided the standard scheme criteria are met, the allowance will be paid on an ex-gratia basis together with arrears. The ex-gratia payment has now been made.

And don’t forget to bow gracefully on the way out…. ok they didn’t say that but can’t you just feel it!!

The decision to make an ex-gratia payment including back money is not precedent setting but surely some in cabinet are seeing the futility of all this confusion and discrimination?

And a note to RTE (listen here until 1pm on the 13th – its about 6 minutes into the bulletin) – the man who now gets the Adult Dependants Allowance is not the terminally ill man’s ‘friend’ – he’s his partner. Fuckers…. oh sorry dear reader but I’ve had it this week with listening to government crap and media naivety. RTE are using the term partner in other aspects of the story.

Meanwhile the Green Party has published it’s proposals for recognition of same sex relationships, so that’s FG and the Greens who have released such documents – where are the rest?