‘CHANGE LAW AND HELP FAMILIES OF MISSING PEOPLE’

WICKLOW DAD BACKING BILL ALLOWING MISSING PEOPLE TO BE DECLARED DEAD AFTER THREE YEARS

GREYSTONES man Brendan Bell is calling on the Government to expedite legislation which would allow missing persons to be declared dead after three years.

Mr Bell, along with Fine Gael Senator Colm Burke, has written to the Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan asking him to allow the Civil Law (Missing persons) Bill to proceed through the Oireachtas, four years after it was first drafted.

Mr Bell, whose daughter Clodagh has been presumed dead since her disappearance on December 31, 2014, said that the status quo is that in such cases families must wait seven years for a death certificate.

Mr Bell said that this legislation has passed the second stage of the bill. He is appealing to Minister Flanagan to expedite the process and back up what Senator Burke is proposing.

‘A very small number of people are affected by this,’ said Mr Bell.

He said that the families of the two remaining missing crew members of rescue 116, Paul Ormsby and Ciarán Smith, are among those affected.

In Scotland, the law provides for a threeyear period, where a person is presumed dead beyond all reasonable doubt, before a death certificate can be issued.

‘My objective is that the Irish Government follow Scottish legislation. Scotland is a seafaring nation with a lot of people lost at sea. Their legislation is superior to ours,’ said Mr Bell.

That law has been in place in Scotland since 1977.

Mr Bell said that in the absence of a death certificate, everything is frozen in terms of finances. Therefore families, particularly the wife or husband of the deceased, are left in limbo with difficulties relating to, for example, mortgages, pensions, legal status, insurance, Revenue and so forth.

‘Without a death certificate you can do zero,’ he said.

In Mr Bell’s case, he is facing difficulties winding up Clodagh’s accountancy business, without proof of death.

‘ There is a country just a few miles away from us that can have appropriate legislation and we don’t,’ he said. ‘I want action. I want someone to make a decision.’

Senator Burke drafted a bill in 2013 which lapsed when an election was called in 2016. Another bill last year was frfrozen by former jujustice minister Frances Fitzgeraldl so that officicials could draw up their own legislation.e

The Law Reform Commission recommended in 2013 that where death was ‘ virtually certain’ there should be no minimum waiting period before an application for a declaration could be made.

“I want action. I want someone to make a decision”