The cost of divorce in Ireland can lead to couples feeling trapped in their marriages, Fine Gael TD Josepha Madigan has said.
Ms Madigan said couples can go from “soulmates to cellmates” as she discussed her experience working as a solicitor practising family law before being elected to the Dáil.
Speaking to the Irish Mirror podcast, The Glass Ceiling , the junior Minister for Special Education and Inclusion said one in 10 marriages in Ireland break down but this is “quite low” in comparison to other countries like the UK or USA.
She said: “I often met clients that would have come to me and said their children had reached the age of 18...then they said now it’s time for me to leave my husband or wife, that they were literally staying for the sake of the children.
“Then I’ve met other couples that want to get divorced or separated but they can’t afford to because as you can imagine, you’re not expected to live under the same roof but then trying to afford to rent or stay somewhere else, people just don’t have the means.
“We often called it from soulmates to cellmates.
“I used to do a lot of mediations where the husband might have been living in the attic and the wife living in the main bedroom, trying to navigate dinner times, really tough stuff.
“Marriage is great when it works, it’s a nightmare when it doesn’t.”
Ms Madigan is a qualified solicitor and practised in family law for 20 years before being elected to the Dáil.
She was the first female lawyer at Cabinet when she was appointed Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht in 2017.
She said solicitors deal with clients that are at the worst stage of their lives and she recalled one client who died by suicide during the recession.
She said: “Their whole marriage is falling apart, particularly during the recession, people had no money, they were trying to share the debt between them as opposed to any assets.
“And you know, I had a particular client who committed suicide at one point because he just couldn’t cope with having no money and his marriage imploding and perhaps his children not talking to him.
“I found the most difficult was the children were the ones who were suffering..
“To put it into context, there is only one in 10 marriages in Ireland that actually break down, in comparison to other countries like the USA or the UK, we’re actually quite low in terms of our marital breakdown rate.
“Some of them become completely entrenched in conflict, they forget what they’re even arguing about and it has a knock on effect on the children.”
Listen to the full interview with Josepha Madigan on The Glass Ceiling podcast on Spotify, Android and on Apple.
