The waiting period before a couple can divorce would be lowered from two years to six months under proposed new legislation.

Green Party TD Patrick Costello will introduce a bill to amend the minimum period of separation, which was already reduced from four years to two in 2019.

Mr Costello said the move to two years “does not go far enough”.

When the constitutional prohibition on divorce was removed following a referendum in 1995, a minimum period of four years was required to access divorce—a clause which was written into the Constitution.

In 2016, Fine Gael TD Josepha Madigan proposed a referendum that would remove the four year wait and replace it, in the text of the Constitution, with a two year wait.

However, in 2019, the Government decided for a referendum that would delete the length of the waiting period entirely from the constitution and leave it up to the Oireachtas to decide what it should be.

They also said they would introduce legislation that would set the waiting period at two years.

The referendum was subsequently passed by a large majority.