The Labour Party says the legal definition of ‘family’ should be changed to include cohabiting couples and other family units that are not based on marriage. Leo Varadkar has made a similar call in the past.

Even though same-sex couples are now allowed to marry, they believe that ‘marriage equality’ needs to become ‘family equality’. Currently, the Constitution pledges the State to protect marriage, but not the family in general.

Labour TD, and spokesperson on children, Ivana Bacik says there is a “a special bubble for families based on marriage”, and that this excludes “other households and other forms of family from Constitutional protection.”

She says the practical impact of this was recently highlighted in the case of John O’Meara from Co Tipperary.

“[His] long-term partner and mother of his children, Michelle Beatty, had died tragically.

“Because they had never married, despite having co-habited for a long, long time, he could not be entitled to a Survivors Pension.

“So his relationship was not recognised by the State – whereas the State in fact does recognise co-habitation for the purpose of depriving people of benefits in other cases in our social welfare code.

“So there’s inconsistency there, but there’s also an unfair discrimination against co-habiting couples”.

“The reality in Ireland today is that we have 150,000 households, according to the last Census, based on a co-habiting couple who are not married – and 75,000 of those households have children.