Sir, – I’m not sure what the most pithy term for the polar opposite of a ringing endorsement is but Orla O’Connor’s article on the updating referendums would appear to be a perfect example of it (“A Yes vote in the referendums won’t change women’s lives. A No vote would be truly retrograde”, Opinion & Analysis, January 6th).
In broad terms, she argues that voting Yes will probably not do much of anything useful while voting No will just look really bad – to whom it’s not clear.
If any country should have learned by now the dangers of inserting into its constitution vague language on social policy, it should be ours.
We’re coming up on the 40th anniversary of the great exemplar of social policy and a constitution being poor bedfellows. The advocates for the eighth amendment thought that the language they chose was going to copperfasten a ban on abortion when it in fact that language led to access to abortion being ruled as a constitutional right.
The plain fact is that if we cannot be 100 per cent sure of what the proposed language to be inserted may lead to then we have an obligation as citizens to vote No and leave the current awkward, odd and anachronistic, yet inert, article be.
That’s not my preferred choice, and it is still not too late to split the deletion and insertion questions in the upcoming referendums and allow the public a choice to remove Article 41.2 and the other text and not be compelled to insert anything in their place. Give us the option to delete and move on.
Otherwise, if we don’t know then we simply have to vote No. – Yours, etc,
DANIEL K SULLIVAN,
Marino,
Dublin 3.
Sir, – In response to the opinion piece by Orla O’Connor, director of the National Women’s Council, yes, we should be voting Yes, but her piece really misses the point.
What we should really be doing is asking why our Constitution needs to comment on families or the role of women or carers at all?
Surely all the relevant legal frameworks for those aspects of our society could (and should) be managed via normal legislation. It would be simpler, and easier to do so certainly.
Ireland is always doing politics via referendum. It is tedious, absolves Government of having to take real action on so many areas, because “it’ll be a matter for some referendum” to decide, and means our Constitution is frankly full of things not sensible to have in a constitution.
Perhaps instead of more tedious tinkering, we should throw the old one in the bin, and start afresh instead?
Ironically, such a step would itself no doubt require a referendum, but I’d vote Yes for that. – Yours, etc,
EVAN BYRNE,
London.