ANALYSIS:PLANS ARE already under way to oppose the referendum on children's rights, which has cross-party support in Leinster House, among a number of groups broadly on the right of the political spectrum.
The anti-Lisbon Treaty organisation Cóir operates out of the same building in Dublin that accommodates Youth Defence. Its spokesman Brian Hickey said the group had been holding strategy meetings since February, when the proposed wording for a constitutional amendment to recognise the rights of children as individuals was published.
Under the guidance of chairwoman Mary O’Rourke of Fianna Fáil, a joint Oireachtas committee agreed the current Article 42, entitled Education, should be deleted from the Constitution, except for sections two, three and four which would be renumbered and rearranged within a new article, to be entitled Children.
“The right to bring up your own children is a fundamental right and the Constitution makes clear you can only be deprived of that right in extreme circumstances,” Mr Hickey said.
“By removing that it would appear they are trying to make it easier for the State to take children away from their parents. I can’t see any other reason for it.
“At present Article 42 is quite pithy, quite succinct, it says everything that needs to be said. The proposed amendment is very wordy, bombastic, ambiguous sometimes in its meaning and unnecessary. My attitude to the Constitution is: if it’s not broken we shouldn’t fix it.”
Mr Hickey said he was confident an unofficial alliance of groups would form to defeat the referendum. “With Lisbon it was hard to co-ordinate an approach because we were divided on so many things, particularly with the far-left groups, but this would be a lot clearer.”
He said about 5,000 people worked for Cóir in various capacities during last year’s Lisbon Treaty referendum. The organisation spent an estimated €250,000, making it by far the biggest spender on the No side.
Meanwhile, the Iona Institute, a Catholic think tank, is in the process of sending a briefing note to TDs entitled “A child’s best interests: who decides?”
The note says the Constitution already allows for State intervention in cases of abuse or neglect and asks if additional powers are required. “Should it [the State] be allowed to override the wishes of parents for their children in a wider range of circumstances? What if this leads to over-intervention by the State as has occurred in other jurisdictions?”
David Quinn, director of the Iona Institute, said he would take a position but had not yet done so as he was waiting to hear the view of “constitutional experts”. He added: “An awful lot depends on what wording is finally agreed”.
Independent Senator Ronan Mullen said he had met Minister of State for Children Barry Andrews to express his concerns about the proposed wording, “which I think is flawed in a number of respects”. He said he was supportive of the concept of a children’s referendum in general, but the idea that parents are in the best position to determine the best interests of children should be made more explicit.
Libertas founder Declan Ganley has no plans to get involved in the campaign.
Eight agencies concerned with child protection recently called on the Government to give a firm commitment to hold the referendum this year.
One of the organisations is the children’s charity Barnardos, whose chief executive Fergus Finlay said the referendum deserved a national debate in its own right.
He said the groups had commissioned research into public attitudes towards the referendum. He said he could not understand the basis of opposition to the proposed wording as he believed it was balanced.
