Did we really mean it when we voted Yes to 31st Amendment?

In the wake of the 2012 vote to include the 31st Amendment to the Constitution, Tanya Ward asks what else we should be doing to prioritise children’s rights in our society.

Five years ago, on November 10, 2012, the Irish electorate voted to include the 31st Amendment to the Irish Constitution. This amendment was ground-breaking because, for the first time, Irish society clearly had a chance to vote directly that children should have rights. Up to that point, the highest law of the land effectively made children second-class citizens. Adults and, more specifically, marital families enjoyed greater rights.

Historically, as a country we didn’t have a great track record on how we treat children. The Ryan Report, which investigated abuse in industrial schools from the 1930s onwards, painfully described how thousands of children were denied their most basic rights through neglect as well as both physical and sexual abuse. The findings showed how we ignored children and didn’t believe them when they told us they were being abused. The impact of that abuse followed them for decades.