Bill threatens `corrupt alteration'

The Constitution would be subject to a "corrupt alteration" if the Amendment Bill relating to the Belfast Agreement was put to a referendum this Friday, the High Court was told yesterday.

Mr Denis Riordan asked the court to intervene to protect the Constitution from the provisions of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution Bill which, he claimed, was inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution.

Mr Riordan yesterday secured leave from Mr Justice Kelly to seek judicial review of the acts of the Taoiseach, as authorised representative of the Government of Ireland, in signing, on April 10th last, an agreement entitled "Agreement Between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of Ireland" which contained a mech anism to amend Articles 2, 3 and 46 of the Constitution "in a manner repugnant to the mandatory provisions contained in Article 46 of the Constitution relating to amendment of the Constitution".

He also sought an injunction preventing the referendum from going ahead on Friday, but the judge said that he would not grant such an order on an ex parte basis and would deal with the application today, in addition to the judicial review proceedings.

In his grounding statement, Mr Riordan said that an annex to the Belfast Agreement contained a proposal for the amendment of Article 29 of the Constitution. However, an amendment to Article 29 contained within it a mechanism "which at some future point in time will allow the Irish Government to amend Articles 2 and 3 by merely making a declaration `. . . that the State has become obliged, pursuant to the Agreement, to give effect to the amendment'."

He said that the amendment to Article 29 of the Constitution contained within it a mechanism to amend Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution in a manner repugnant to the mandatory provisions of the Constitution.

Mr Riordan claimed that the 19th Amendment to the Constitution Bill, as passed by both Houses of the Oireachtas, contained a proposal to amend Article 29 of the Constitution but contained no proposal to amend Articles 2, 3 or 46 of the Constitution. He said that the words "notwithstanding Article 46" were contained in the proposed amendment to Article 29. If these represented the setting aside or repeal of the mandatory provisions contained in Article 46, then Article 46 was repealed for all future time.

Mr Riordan argued that if the constitutional provisions allowing for amendment of the Constitution were removed from it, then no further amendments could take place in the future. The Article 46 provisions could only be repealed or amended by an amendment to Article 46 itself and not by an amendment to another article.

He said the fact that the constitutional requirements contained in Article 46 were being violated had been "recognised by the Referendum Commission" in its published document outlining the arguments for and against the referendum on Northern Ireland.

Mr Riordan said that Article 46 clearly provided the procedure to be followed for the amendment of the Constitution and therefore prohibited any other method of amendment, such as that proposed in the 19th Amendment Bill.

Through the 19th Amendment Bill, the Government was failing to abide by the restraints placed on it by the Constitution and was therefore violating Article 28.2 of the Constitution, he argued.

His application was to prevent the corrupt alteration proposed by the 19th Amendment Bill and to restrain the Government and Dail Eireann from violating mandatory provisions of the Constitution.

Mr Riordan said: "My fundamental right as a citizen to have amendments to the Constitution carried out in accordance with the mandatory provisions contained in Article 46 of the Constitution is being violated by the Government and both Houses of the Oireachtas."

Because of a previous High Court ruling (which dismissed an application by Mr Riordan to have the 1995 Divorce Act declared unconstitutional on the grounds that the court had no jurisdiction to entertain a challenge to an Act approved by the people in a referendum), Mr Riordan argued that the court should intervene before the referendum took place.