Madam, - I would like to support the call by the Unmarried and Separated Fathers of Ireland for reform of Irish family law, as reported in your edition of June 15th. The suffering of a parent alienated from a child by the application of family law must be truly extreme.
The in-camera rule denies the cruelly wounded even the right to have their story told. This inhuman rule is applied whether or not a family has juvenile children. Thus its purpose cannot be just to protect children.
The law gives comfort and protection to one class of person, the third party lover in a ménage à trois, by not recognising that such a party can exist. The law is thus destructive of marriage and the family rather than protecting them, as is required by the Constitution.
A total review of Irish family law is overdue. - Yours, etc.,
DAVID ORR, Passage West, Co Cork.