Oct 13, 2010
Yet Another Draft Text for the Children’s Referendum Amendment?
Today’s Irish Examiner reports that a new wording for a children’s rights referendum is now being drafted by the Attorney General.
According to the report,
Taoiseach Brian Cowen told the Dáil that the all-party consensus and the wording resulted in a “range of unintended policy and resource implications”.
The suggestion that the wording proposed by the Oireachtas Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children gives rise to a number of implications that were previously unforeseen by government seems highly surprising given the involvement of government party representatives in the Committee’s work, including the drafting of the proposed wording. Indeed, given the time already spent by the Committee on the drafting, it is disappointing and frustrating that its work appears to have simply been set aside only for the ‘drafting process’ to be assumed by yet another actor – this time, the AG.
A further piece on this issue will appear on this blog over the coming days when the text of the Dail debate is available for analysis.
The Children’s Constitutional amendment has previous been blogged about here, here and here. The draft text proposed by the Oireachtas Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children was the subject of a blog carnival.
