A chara, – At the heart of the debate over the care amendment is the contention by the No camp that the State should confer an absolute right to all required care to all who need it at the cost of the State, and by extension, the general taxpayer. If their preferred rights-based amendment were passed there would be no end of costly litigation by all who deem their State-provided care to be inadequate or not to their preferred standard. It would certainly be a boon to the legal and caring professions.
But can the State afford to take on this potentially infinite liability? We are already approaching the pensions time bomb where fewer and fewer workers will have to support more and more pensioners. The costs of our public healthcare, elder care, disability care, and childcare budgets are already exploding even as our waiting lists lengthen still further.
There is a hard truth beneath all of this. The primary responsibility for caring must always rest with the individuals and families effected, as assisted by the State as resources allow. We can expand those resources as our economy grows, but the wealth to do so has to come from somewhere. It is a matter of economic, political, and social choices rather than of absolute rights.
By all means vote out governments you view as not doing enough to help those in need of care. But do not force governments to bankrupt the State in the satisfaction of absolute rights with resources that will never be infinite. – Is mise,
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FRANK SCHNITTGER,
Blessington,
Co Wicklow.
Sir, – I write on the proposal to add “or other durable relationships” to Article 41.1 of the Constitution. This is presented as a practical amendment in present situations. In fact, it undermines marriage.
Putting “other durable relationships” on the same footing as marriage means marriage is now simply another “durable relationship”. People may enjoy the wedding day, but it has no real significance. This was illustrated recently when a court deemed an unmarried widower and father to be married for all practical purposes.
Many people may have a resentment of the traditional domination of marriage by the church in Christian countries. But, historically, marriage preceded Christianity and had the serious aim of being a guarantee to society on the part of the couple that the rearing of the future generation was in responsible hands. That marriage sometimes didn’t succeed was traditionally met with provision for divorce. However, societies didn’t think, as we now propose, in terms of effectively abolishing marriage. Despite the doubtless honourable intentions of the drafters (as in the proposed revision of Article 41.3), “durable relationships” will become the default situation. So why bother at all with “marriage”?
A misreading seems also to underlie the proposal regarding women in the home. The proposal is to broaden the existing provision so that the provision of care is undertaken by the members of the family generally rather than burdening the mother alone. The existing provision is not, however, concerned with the burden of care but rather with the protection of mothers. Despite the laudable growth in involvement of fathers in home care, the experiences of carrying a child in her womb for nine months, of giving birth and of immediate after birth care conveys a specific “understanding” on mothers. Even if families are much smaller than in the past and the length of time needed for post-birth care is less, it is nonetheless socially undesirable for the crucial early experience of life of future adults that their mothers should be pressurised, by economic necessity, to curtail this time of care.
For these reasons, I shall be voting No on both issues in the forthcoming referendum. – Yours, etc,
TOM GILLEN,
Dundrum,
Dublin 14.