Ireland's Independent:

"...In 2009, Brendan Dempsey, the southern regional president of the Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP) said the absence of fathers from the lives of children was set to cause "huge problems".

Echoing what Alesha Dixon had to say, he said that in some housing estates in Cork nine out of 10 homes visited by the SVP had no father present.

Mr Dempsey recalled going into a house where a small boy asked him, "Will you be my daddy?"

He added: "I am often asked 'are you my daddy?' That to me says there is a want."

Ms Burton's proposed change to the law regarding birth certs is, as mentioned, a step in the right direction. But on its own it won't connect fathers to their children.

The best way to do that is to arrest the decline of marriage in certain communities in the country, especially the sort of housing estates Mr Dempsey referred to.

Nothing connects a father to his children better than marriage, but our body politic dogmatically refuses to recognise this basic fact of life despite the fact that social policy is meant to be evidence-led."