'Valerie's Law' will strip parents who kill their spouses of guardianship rights to their children

Vivienne Clarke

The brother of a woman murdered by her husband has welcomed plans by the Minister for Justice to introduce legislation to withdraw guardianship rights from a parent who has killed their spouse.

James Kilroy was found guilty in July 2024 of his wife's murder. Valerie French Kilroy was murdered at her home in Kilbree Lower, Westport, Co Mayo, between June 13th and June 14th, 2019.

Her brother, David French, told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland that he is looking forward to reading the text of ‘Valerie’s Law’, which is due to be presented to Cabinet on Wednesday by Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan.

“I really appreciate the work the Department has been doing on drafting this, and the Minister in particular. This is one more step in the kind of aftermath of the murder, and absolutely massively welcome.

“I really look forward to seeing the text of the Bill and seeing it go before the Dáil for debate. These are complicated situations. Family life is complicated. There's a lot of different configurations, and there's a lot of legislation in this space.

"But as the Minister said, this is child protection. This is taking a verdict from the criminal court and applying it for the best interests of children, regardless of so-called rights of a killer, the best interests of the children are the most important thing.

“If the family's been completely dissolved, there's no point pretending it still exists. It doesn't if one parent has killed the other.”

French said in his experience the verdict in a criminal court “might as well happen on the moon as far as family law or property law or any other venue is concerned.

“And that struck us as particularly strange that the rest of the system sees the family as continuing on regardless. And murder is absolutely massive. Unless it happens in your family, you don't realise what a massive, massive thing it is.

“It seems to have no implications outside the criminal court up until now. So I really look forward to seeing the debate in the Dáil on this and really thank local representatives in particular for their support on this.”

When asked about the campaign for Valerie’s Law, French said the constitutionality issue had come up on many occasions.

“Some groups were very much telling me, like, you can't do that, the constitution says X, and you just absolutely can't. And you're like, well, murder's a big deal and it needs to be taken into account and there are a lot of child protection rights.

“So it might seem obvious, but, you know, as everyone knows, legislation, even when it's straightforward and things are obvious, they still take a long time and there's a lot of competing priorities.

"I absolutely look forward to seeing the text and seeing the debate, and this is one more step towards enactment and child protection. And front and centre are Valerie's children and Valerie.”