THE REFERENDUM on the constitutional rights of children should be held as a matter of priority and should not be associated with any of the pending Dáil byelections, Fianna Fáil TD Mary O’Rourke told the MacGill Summer School yesterday.
Ms O’Rourke, who chaired the Oireachtas Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children, called on the Government to put the proposal to the people “as quickly as possible”.
Perhaps the wording might have to be “tweaked”, but she pointed out that the referendum was born out of consensus when it was published last February.
“I strongly believe that if we don’t do it now, we have lost the time.” It was “too important” to be “mired” in the debate about the byelections pending in three Dáil constituencies.
Asked about the date of the referendum, she said: “I don’t know, I am just a creature of the backbenches.”
She believed it was intended to be held before the next general election. The former minister for education noted that, since 1937, there had been 21 constitutional amendments, seven of which were rejected by the electorate.
These included a 1979 proposal, which was approved by a very large majority, on university representation in the Seanad.
The purpose was to give votes in Seanad elections to graduates of all third-level institutions, instead of just Trinity and the National University of Ireland. Only 45,000 voted against and more than 552,000 voted in favour, but governments of all hues had since failed to put it into practice.
“The people’s will was disregarded, a will affirmed very, very strongly,” Ms O’Rourke said.
On the children’s amendment, she said: “We were mandated to bring in a consensus report: I was mandated as chair and each member on it. And it was quite remarkable, the enthusiasm of that committee.” The committee was determined to arrive at a wording that all of its members would agree upon.
They recommended a new version of Article 42 setting out the rights of children be inserted into the Constitution.
“We fulfilled our mandate,” she said. Ministers were looking at it and assessing how much it was going to cost.
“There is no place for ‘but’ in this matter,” she said, although she stressed it was not the “panacea” to remedy all the ills facing children in Irish society. But she felt it would bring about a framework within which “the rights of children will very comfortably fit”.
It would go a long way towards ensuring “a fairer climate for children”, Ms O’Rourke said.
Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman of the Supreme Court said constitutional reform and even framing a new constitution had been a topical subject since the 50th anniversary of Bunreacht na hÉireann in 1987.
Regarding a proposal to scrap Bunreacht na hÉireann and replace it with a document similar to the 1916 Proclamation, he said: “A constitution is not a pronunciamento.” Some people even hankered for the days when a Soviet judge said his job was the application of the law as a political expression of the ruling party and government.
Separation of powers had to be maintained by the preservation of a “sedulous respect” on the part of the government and the judiciary for one another.
He said he had learned from the words of Marge Simpson in the television cartoon series who said: “You can’t use the law to nag.” There were those who thought the law could be used, not just to nag, “but to batter into submission”.
The fact that the Constitution was 73 years old and of a certain length should not be drawbacks. He said, like antiques, the authority of a constitution tended to increase over time.
Criticising recent RTÉ programme Aftershock, he said the demand for simplicity expressed there could result in the loss of basic constitutional rights.
