Minister Simon Coveney who is running Fine Gael’s Yes campaign in the marriage referendum has denied that children have a right to a mother and a father.

When asked, during an interview conducted with The Irish Times newspaper, if the right to a mother and father existed, Minister Simon Coveney said: “No I don’t, no.

A recent poll conducted by Amarach Research on behalf of The Iona Institute found that only 8pc of people hold Minister Coveney’s view.

The poll  asked people whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: ‘Children have a right to be raised by their own mother and father’. Seventy percent of respondents agreed, against 8% who did not. That poll built on the findings of a similar survey in February in which 90% of respondents agreed that in adoption cases, a child would be best placed with a mother and a father.

Minister Coveney told The Irish Times: “Every child has a biological mother and father, of course they do, but not every child has a mother and father. We have huge numbers of children at the moment growing up in single parent households. We have same-sex couples that have the responsibility to bring up children… Anyone who thinks that family is as simple as organising a traditional nuclear family for every child in the country I don’t think really understands the complexity of family relationships.”

Referencing his own upbringing in a traditional family unit, which he described as “a very stable and positive upbringing”, Minister Coveney admitted that his attitude to family structures has changed over the last decade. “Relationships, lifetime relationships are very varied now,” he said. “They’re often quite complex.”