THE COMMITTEE on the Constitutional Amendment on Children will seek to bring forward an improved text for the proposed children’s rights amendment before it completes its work later this year, its chairwoman said.
Mary O'Rourke told The Irish Timesshe was "very, very surprised" to hear Minister for Children Barry Andrews tell the committee on Wednesday that the wording put forward by the Government in 2007 was the best available. "If that's the case, I don't know why we were set up," she said. "We had been working on improving the amendment. If the wording was okay, why ask us to improve it?"
Meanwhile, Mrs Justice Catherine McGuinness, author of the Kilkenny Incest Report, which first proposed an amendment to the Constitution strengthening the rights of children, has acknowledged that there will be a "strong reaction" to the proposed referendum on children's rights.
Groups that are “very much for the rights of the unborn child” may “object quite strongly to a constitutional amendment for the rights of the born child”, Mrs Justice McGuinness said. The chairwoman of the Law Reform Commission was speaking at the Clifden Arts Festival interview, chaired by NUI Galway law lecturer Donncha O’Connell at the weekend.
There was “no doubt” that from a “fairly right-wing point of view, there will be a strong reaction to it”, she said. “It is not an easy wording and we have to look carefully at what we are going to say,” she said. Passing a constitutional amendment was only one of a number of measures required to protect children, Mrs Justice McGuinness added.
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has expressed serious concerns about reports, following the Oireachtas committee meeting on Wednesday, that the Government intends to revert to the “flawed constitutional wording” on children’s rights that it first published in 2007.
Its director, Mark Kelly, called for an amendment that would enshrine the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into the Constitution.
The Government’s proposed amendment on children’s rights has attracted criticism since it was published in 2007, particularly from specialists in the law relating to children.
The proposed amendment acknowledges and affirms “the natural and imprescriptible rights of all children” and provides that the children of married couples may be adopted, which is virtually impossible under the present law. It obliges the courts to “endeavour to secure the best interests of the child” in all adoption, guardianship, custody and access cases.
However, it has been pointed out that under the Guardianship of Infants Act, the rights of the child are “paramount” and asking the courts to “endeavour” to secure them actually weakens these statutory provisions.
When the Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children was set up its terms of reference were: drawing up recommendations for making the rights of children more explicit; removing obstacles for the adoption of children in care and ensuring the best interests of the child apply in court processes relating to adoption, guardianship, custody and access.
A spokesman for Mr Andrews told The Irish Timesyesterday that the Minister considered the 2007 wording satisfied the objectives set out, of recalibrating the rights of children in the Constitution and providing for equality between marital and non-marital children, especially with regard to adoption. He said there was consensus in the committee on these objectives.