Vote NO to hypocrisy
Ms Fitzgerald’s website states: “It [the Constitution] does not provide an express statement of rights for children.” That’s a falsity.
There’s much the same from the American and exchequer-funded Children’s Rights Alliance and other proponents of a yes vote. The two rights have been air-brushed out of the debate. Seventy-five years after the Constitution was enacted, neither have been granted by any Irish government. One of them is manifest as an outrageous, endemic, intellectual abuse of at least 20,000 Irish children and is likely to become the Magdalene laundries case of this generation.
The first right is straightforward. Article 42.4 says: “The State shall provide for free primary education…” But it isn’t free, as Barnardos confirms in annual surveys. Books, sham-voluntary subscriptions, stationery contributions, and locker rentals amount to circa €300 a child; a hardship for poor and large families.
The second right is more controversial, for it involves the subversion of the Catholic Church. Article 44.2.4: “Legislation providing State aid for schools shall not… be such as to affect prejudicially the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending religious instruction at that school.”
The Referendum Commission’s information booklet has ignored this, too.
Pupils of humanist families sit through 90-plus hours a year in the same room as their Catholic pals while the latter study their religious instruction and practise their prayers and hymns. Humanist parents are therefore paying for the religious instruction of others, while their own children spend hours being taught nothing. The majority of our national schools are in locations where there are no alternatives.!
The Irish Human Rights Commission held a seminar on this topic in 2010, received 60 submiss-ions, and made recommendations to government in Apr 2011. Education Minister Ruairi Quinn then set up the Coolahan Committee which, after public consultation, made proposals in April for protecting this constitutional right of every child. This Government failed to accept Coolahan’s proposals for standalone schools.
The intellectual abuse of humanist pupils is widely tolerated by society. It involves both Church and State, without clear lines of responsibility. As night follows day, a pupil will suit and the State — that is, us — will pay. In this, the issue mimics the Magdalene debacle.
Our starting point in this referendum campaign — as Two Rights Now! — was to draw attention to the gross hypocrisy of the cross-party advocates of the amendment, by their denial of, and lack of interest in, enforcing these existing constitutional rights. Broadcast and print media, until now, have been complicit.
Proponents are naïve to connect improvements to constitutional change. Amendments have regularly led to nothing: The abolition of the special position of the Catholic Church (1972); permitted changes in university representation in the Seanad, to allow the likes of DCU, UL, and DIT elect senators (1979); and recognition of local authorities (1999) — which was fanfared recently by the abolition of all town councils.
Some of the proposed wording is meaningless guff: “The State recognises and affirms the natural and imprescriptible rights of children…” Imprescriptible means those that can not be taken away. How can we know they are not taken away if we do not know what they are? Are unelected judges to decide, maybe at great expense to those who might rely on the clause?
More of the proposed wording is superfluous: “The best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration.” The best interests of the child are already guaranteed by a number of pieces of legislation. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 12, says: “The State must give due regard to the opinions of the child and guarantees a right to have their views given due weight in accordance with their age and intelligence.” And: “The child or young person has the right to be heard in all decision-making processes, including in court hearings.” Sub-article 4 is unnecessary. We do need most courts held in public, with names sometimes made anonymous.
We agree with Judge Hugh O’Flaherty that almost all the proposals could be done by ordinary legislation. Unlike constitutional law, (which could have unforeseen outcomes — remember the 8th Amendment intended to quell abortion, which ended up allowing it?) this can be fine-tuned in the light of experience.
During the 1973-77 adminis-tration, Paddy Cooney, the Fine Gael justice minister, changed the adoption laws to permit adoption by “mixed marriage” couples. I like to think this was on foot of my proposal at my first Fine Gael ard fheis of 1972 in Cork. The voluntary adoption of the children of married people is a long tradition in Ireland; legislating for it should present no constitutional problem.
Two Rights Now! does not trust State authorities with some of the wording, for example, that used in sub-article 2.1: When “welfare”, i.e. health and prosperity, “is likely to be prejudicially affected, the State… shall [act]”. Who is to guess, or decide, when a child is to be taken from its parents? When the family is poor? We accept that constitutional changes will be required to put unmarried parents on a par with married ones in some circumstances and to provide for the involuntary adoption of children of dysfunctional families.
The proper course is to openly discuss these matters before the Constitutional Convention and bring us all along, as grown-ups, not as a flock of sheep, with proposals which could be put before the people at the Jun 2014 elections.
It seems no lessons were learned following the rejection of the all-party proposals for expanding the power of Dáil committees last year.
* Two Rights Now! is a group established to campaign for a no vote in the referendum. www.tworightsnow.org
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