Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern has said a referendum may be needed to update the law on statutory rape so that an adult charged with having sex with a minor cannot claim they did not know the child's age.
The only way of 'rowing back' on the recent Supreme Court ruling to remove 'honest belief'as a defence for someone having intercourse with a minor, would be to hold a referendum, he said.
Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte
"I have some personal sympathy with that view," he said.
Mr Ahern said, however, it was for an all-party Oireachtas committee to examine the issues.
The Supreme Court recently found a section of a 1935 law on statutory rape to be unconstitutional because it did not allow a defendant to claim they had made a reasonable mistake as to the child's age.
The 1935 law had not, in effect, been carried over with the establishment of the 1937 Constitution.
The Oireachtas passed emergency legislation last Friday to update the law rape following the Supreme Court judgment, which allowed a 41-year-old man who raped a 12-year-old girl to walk free from prison.
Mr Ahern said today he had spoken to the Attorney General and his advice had been that it would be legal to change the constitution after a referendum to get back to the position prior to the striking down of the law.
Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte rejected Mr Ahern's call as "an irrelevant distraction".
"The Minister is clearly kite-flying, without official Government sanction. And he is seeking to distract attention both from the hopelessly inadequate initial Government response to this issue and from the serious flaws we have highlighted in the Government's eventual legislation," he said.
"These flaws were not foisted on the Government by anything in the Supreme Court decision. They are of the Government's own making."
Mr Rabbitte called for a "credible independent inquiry" into the handling of the case.
"We need accountability as to who knew what and when. And, if they did not know in time, we need to know why not."
He said a proper review of the law on sexual activities involving young people was also required.
"Those laws must provide a comprehensive protection for children against the disgusting and vile predations of sexual abusers. But the laws should be framed rationally, not on Minister McDowell's clumsy, 'one size fits all' basis and not by reference to specific sexual acts that the Minister seems have chosen to legalise or criminalise on a random and incoherent basis."
At the weekend, the Government rejected Opposition demands for an independent inquiry into the Attorney General's office's handling of court challenges statutory rape laws.
Last night the Government said a Department of Finance official would review the files to discover why Attorney General Rory Brady was not told that a court challenge had begun in 2002 to the State's statutory rape laws, before it was transferred to the Supreme Court in 2004.