It remains an open question, both among clinical psychiatrists and zoologists, whether the creature that inserts its head determinedly into the sand does so because at some deep level it knows the truth or because it is blithely oblivious to the truth.

I was conscious of this recently when, as lead author of the report by The Today Public Policy Institute, entitled For Worse, For Better: Re-marriage After Legal Separation, I had the privilege of giving evidence to the House Standing Committee on Social Affairs about it. I was given a courteous and fair hearing by members of the committee but I doubt I affected the mindset of those who were against divorce under any circumstances.

The most I did try was to expose the weaknesses of their ideological positions. But the ideologue, like the bigot, simply re-selects and adjusts the facts to suit his pre-conceived stance. My impression was that the argument descended to this fall-back position: "But I still need tangible proof that changing our present laws would not undermine society."

This is the counsel of despair, which accepts that an important social issue is too difficult to achieve or too big to tackle despite the obvious necessity of doing so. Those who oppose the introduction of divorce fear that it would destabilise many existing marriages and bring about an overall weakening of the bonds holding society together.

As evidence of this, a collapse of marriage in many other western societies, when measured by the incidence of divorce or cohabitation, is cited.

But this collapse and its unhappy consequences for families is prevalent in considerable numbers in Malta as well. The only difference is that the collapse here has to be measured not in divorce applications but in broken marriages, as exemplified by the high - and accelerating - number of annulments and legal separations, as well as divorces obtained abroad.

The absence of civil dissolution after legal separation has plainly spared Malta none of the pain and tensions and disequilibrium of the modern age. All that it is doing is making life more difficult than it need be for many people caught up in this tragedy.

It is both unjust and hypocritical to marginalise legally-separated couples and to prevent their further participation in the stable, orthodox and healthy family environment which re-marriage after legal separation would provide. The alternative is for couples to co-habit and I challenge anybody to confirm that cohabitation is preferable to re-marriage after legal separation. The question which some of our legislators may be struggling with, therefore, is whether an apprehension, a fear, that the situation might be made worse would justify the continuation of an actual and existing injustice. While no two countries are alike, the availability of divorce in Ireland since 1997 - like Malta, a staunchly Catholic country where the introduction of divorce was fiercely resisted - has not borne out the dire predictions of those who were against divorce.

Divorce and family breakdown flood-gates have not been opened and relatively few Irish people have actually been divorced. It has stood annually at about 3,000 to 3,500 (out of a population of over four million) for the last 10 or 11 years. The Irish, together with the Italians, have one of the lowest rates of divorce in the western world. There is no reason to suppose that Malta - which has very similar family-cultural affinities with Ireland and Italy - would be any different.

It is a fact that marital discord and marriage breakdown come before - often well before - legal separation or divorce. To argue that it is divorce that is the cause of marital breakdown, as some have done, is utterly illogical. If those who opposed re-marriage after legal separation really believed the assertion that it is the direct cause of marriage breakdown they would, in logic, oppose legal separations as well. Yet, they do not conclude that legal separations - which Malta has had for well over a century - ought to be prohibited and it would clearly be retrograde to do so.

Similarly, no country in the world, which has introduced divorce, argues that it should be removed from the statute books. Some might argue that divorce has been made too easy but that is a separate issue. It obviously follows that if divorce is made easier with each successive change of the law, as has happened in many European countries, then the rate of divorce will inevitably increase. The wise legislator in Malta will ensure that our divorce legislation is made firm but fair and restrictive in order precisely that it should not lead to "easy divorce". My report makes proposals to this effect based on the Irish model.

People who seek civil dissolution are looking for a civilised remedy, under the law, for a finished marriage and the possibility to enjoy the stability offered by re-marriage. The objective of divorce laws is to empower people to re-build their lives after marriage breakdown and legal separation within the proper regulation of the law. Only the ostrich, with his head firmly buried in the sand, could fail to see this.