The wording of the Government's planned referendum on children is capable of a wide range of interpretations and could complicate the legal position of families outside marriage, Prof William Binchy said yesterday.
He was speaking at a conference on children's rights in Trinity College Dublin last night chaired by former Supreme Court judge Mrs Justice Catherine McGuinness.
Prof Binchy, Regius professor of laws at Trinity College, said the best solution was to proceed with the amendments relating to child protection and delay consideration of other provisions until their possible impact on the rights and welfare of children can be clarified.
"In short, the language of the amendment is capable of a very wide range of different interpretations if it is to be regarded as requiring integration into the totality of constitutional rights and duties," he said.
"No one can predict exactly how it would be applied in practice: very probably, it would have the welcome effects of changing the outcome in the circumstances that arose in the baby Ann case [where the best interests of the child were not considered by the court] and of permitting the adoption of children into long-term care who have no longer any meaningful relationship with their parents, but how much further its impact would be is far from certain."
Solicitor and child law expert Geoffrey Shannon told the conference that the amendment's plan to provide for the sharing of "soft information" in relation to people who may pose a risk to children would need to be accompanied by strict safeguards.
He said the need to allow citizens a chance to protect their name and put in place safeguards to help prevent the exchange of malicious or speculative information was of crucial importance.
The Ombudsman for Children Emily Logan told the conference that, following the public concern over the statutory rape crisis last year, there was never a better time to change the Constitution to provide further protection for children.
However, she warned against people getting carried away with this fresh momentum and said the focus should be on ensuring the Constitution was changed in the right way.
However, Jillian van Turnhout of the Children's Rights Alliance said she was "disheartened" that some were calling for the proposed amendment to be delayed on the basis that it was too complex to be debated within the allotted timescale. "These issues have been flagged since 1993. Do we need to wait another 15 years for the time to be right to debate these issues? To wait till another generation of children have grown up?" she said.
