Greens push for vote on children’s rights

THE Greens have floated the idea of a different referendum being held on election day — the long-delayed referendum on children’s rights.

Much of the political focus recently has been on a proposal to hold a referendum proposing the abolition of the Seanad.

The Cabinet is due to consider the possibility of holding the Seanad referendum on the same day as the election, which will likely be in March.

But Green leader John Gormley yesterday expressed doubt about this happening, saying such a plan was “very ambitious”.

“I’m not ruling it out, but I think it would be extremely difficult,” he said of the Seanad proposal.

However, it has now emerged the Greens would like a different referendum on election day — the vote to insert specific children’s rights into the Constitution.

“We’d be keen for it to happen if at all possible,” a spokesman for Mr Gormley said last night.

It’s understood Children’s Minister Barry Andrews is due to update the Cabinet on the progress being made on the wording for a referendum proposal in the coming weeks.

However, the children’s rights referendum is likely to run into the same difficulties as the Seanad referendum — the limited time available to arrange for it.

Mr Gormley pointed out yesterday that the Government’s first focus would have to be on passing the Finance Bill to give effect to the budget.

In addition to that, the Greens want to implement legislation on climate change, the Dublin mayoralty and political donations before the dissolution of the Government, an extremely ambitious agenda in the short timeframe left.

The only factor that would give the Government a better chance of holding the children’s rights referendum than the Seanad referendum is the fact that work has been proceeding on the former for some time.

The children’s rights referendum had been expected last year after a cross-party Oireachtas committee agreed a proposed wording for it, following an exhaustive consultation process.

However, the Government subsequently announced it would not proceed with the wording as the Attorney General had identified a range of problems with it. Since then, Children’s Minister Andrews has been attempting to tease out the issues involved.

Meanwhile, Mr Gormley said that March 25 would be a “reasonable” date for the election, despite his party’s statement last month that it was time to “fix a date for a general election in the second half of January”.

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore accused the Greens of a U-turn and said the Government was delivering “excuse after excuse” for prolonging its time in office. The sooner we had the election, the better, he said.