Facing up to vote’s reality
LAST Wednesday in this paper, I wrote an article dedicated to illustrating why I believe the constitutional amendment on children will not give the State any additional or enhanced powers to intervene in family affairs to protect children. You can imagine my surprise, therefore, when during the TV3 referendum debate, John Waters quoted me as saying the amendment would make a “significant” change to the powers of the State. To his credit, Vincent Browne read out my email clarifying that I had been completely misquoted, but since an hour had passed in the meantime, the damage had been done.
This was only one of many instances of misleading information being presented during the debate. One of numerous other examples came when Kathy Sinnott tried to claim that the amendment would remove the provision of the Constitution relied on in her son’s case against the State for failing to provide him with a suitable education. She was referring to Article 42.5 (State supplying the place of the parents by appropriate means); but the Jamie Sinnott case revolved entirely around Article 42.4 (free primary education), which is not being changed at all by the amendment.
