Children’s rights referendum will not be held this year

THE proposed referendum on children’s rights will definitely not be held until next year.

This means the defence of “honest mistake” about a person’s age will continue to be available until at least then to adults accused of having sex with minors.

The cross-party committee responsible for agreeing the wording on the referendum won’t be able to finish its work by the original March deadline, it emerged yesterday.

As a result, the Government agreed to extend the deadline for the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children to November 30. A Government spokesman last night said the extension was granted so as to allow the committee to “deepen” consensus on the issue.

“The committee felt they needed that length of time to produce a consensus report,” said the spokesman. The news will anger children’s rights campaigners, who had called on the Government not to delay the referendum, which was originally scheduled to have been held this year.

One of the chief goals of the referendum will be to strengthen the law against adults who have sex with minors by removing the defence of “honest mistake”. The referendum will also address children’s rights more generally.

In January, the Children’s Rights Alliance urged the Government to move with speed on the issue, claiming the referendum was 30 years overdue. The alliance pointed out that as far back as 1976, constitutional change to safeguard children’s rights had been mooted at Oireachtas level.

Alliance chief executive Gillian Van Turnhout said any further delay would be “shameful”.

But the Government had strongly signalled in recent weeks that the referendum would be held over until 2009. The need to hold a separate referendum this year on the Lisbon Treaty was one complication. The Government briefly considered holding both referendums on the same day, but later rejected the idea.

Fine Gael subsequently claimed this was a mistake, saying the failure to hold the children’s referendum this year would place minors at risk from sexual predators.