Dear Friends, 

In November 2009, Marriage Equality brought together 11 young people from across the country in Ireland to facilitate a one-day workshop at UNICEF’s offices in Dublin.  The purpose of this workshop was to look at their experiences of growing up with lesbian parents in Ireland.  The workshop findings were written up into a report entitled ‘Voices of Children’ and was launched on 8 September 2010 at a conference of the same name by then Minister of State Ciaran Cuffe, at the Wood Quay Venue, Dublin City Council.

This groundbreaking report documents not only the sometimes heartbreaking legal, policy and administrative barriers that the young people involved in the research have faced, but also outlines key recommendations as to how we as a society can address the lack of legal rights and discrimination which these young people experience in their daily lives.  Currently children and young people in Ireland, being raised by same sex parents, have no legal relationship with one of their parents, which leaves them in legal limbo and exposes them to many unnecessary worries, particularly in relation to emergency health care and school situations. 

The conference itself, brought together both international and Irish experts in the areas of child/family law and children’s rights and we also heard from the report author and two of the young people involved in the initial workshop, who eloquently shared some of their personal experiences.  They also spoke of their journey from coming together at the first workshop to forming the ‘Believe in Equality’ group, to doing media work and they outlined the work they intend to do with the Believe in Equality group in the future.

We are enclosing a copy of Voices of Children –Proceedings of the Conference, which

includes the presentations from all the speakers at the conference: Moninne Griffith, Director of Marriage Equality, Grainne Healy, Chairwoman of Marriage Equality, Fergus Finlay, CEO of Barnardos, Iris Elliott, Report Author, Conor Pendergrast and Christine Irwin-Murphy, Members of the Believe in Equality Group, Professor Sheila Greene, Director, Children’s Research Centre, TCD, Helen Statham, Senior Research Associate and Deputy Director, Centre for Family Research, Cambridge University, Geoffrey Shannon, Solicitor and Child Law Expert, Dr. Machteld Vonk, Assistant Professor of Comparative Law and Family Law, Utrecht University, Netherlands, Minister of State Ciaran Cuffe and finally a roundup of the day’s proceedings by Niall Crowley, Independent Equality Consultant. 

Further copies of this report and the Voices of Children report are also available in either hard or electronic copy format.  If you would like a hard copy of either of these reports, please e-mail us at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . 

We hope you find this report useful and we would ask you to contact us to get involved in further work around this issue. 

Yours faithfully,

Moninne Griffith

Director