Sir, – There is an army of Irish mothers (and others) keeping children and hence society going. Not every child can do 40 hours a week in group childcare. Not every child can manage a full week in school. Not every child can manage a full day in school and then skip off happily to another four to five hours of formalised care.
This work is counted nowhere and hence no value given to it.
I suggest the National Women’s Council use their voice to represent all women and not only the ones they deem to be the correct sort.
A No vote in the upcoming referendum would signal the need for an overdue conversation about our national childcare policy. – Yours, etc,
LENA DEEVY,
Ballinlough,
Cork.
Sir, – Article 41, one can assume, was written and approved by Irish men and women at a time when they believed it appropriate and necessary. Those people, by and large, did the state some service. No more of that.
It, however, has no place in a modern and progressive country, yet alone a backward one, and it should be removed. The notion that, because of some intangible, derivative concern about downstream interpretations of the word “durable”, we should retain the ludicrous notion that “woman” has a “life within the home” and that mothers should be considering whether they are neglecting “their duties in the home” is ridiculous.
I have absolute confidence that our learned friends have the skill and expertise to figure out the complex legal ramifications of getting rid of this language. – Yours, etc,
IAN HEADON,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – The upcoming referendums are the latest manifestation of two trends which are highly corrosive to democracy in Ireland.
First, they continue the trend whereby the Constitution is increasingly seen not as a codification of the fundamental rights enjoyed by all citizens, but as a shopping list of virtue-signalling platitudes which can be added to over time to defuse political controversies. This has long been the view of the left, but is now clearly the view of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil as well, since both parties support a referendum on new right to housing as well as a ridiculous proposal that the environment should be granted constitutional rights.
Second, and far more seriously, the referendums in March would transfer significant power from the elected Oireachtas to the unelected and unaccountable judiciary.
As Michael McDowell points out (“Voting No is the prudent choice on March 8th”, Opinion & Analysis, January 10th), thanks to the hopelessly vague referendum wording, judges – and not the voters or their elected representatives – would ultimately decide what a “durable relationship” is and whether a “family” has been founded on it. This continues a pattern in recent years of governments shirking decisions on controversial issues and preferring to let the courts, statutory agencies, citizens’ assemblies, or EU institutions make decisions for them.
Clearly, many within Government want to radically expand the definition of the “family”, but fear the political controversy which this might stir up. Instead, they hope the judiciary will do the heavy lifting for them by filling in the blanks of the vague referendum wording, setting a new definition of the family in stone which could not be changed by a future Oireachtas. In the United States, politicians of both parties spent much of the last century relying on the US Supreme Court to perform a similar task.
It’s only in recent years, when hugely divisive issues came to the fore, that they realised the absolute folly of granting such huge political power to unelected judges.
Will Irish voters also have to learn this lesson the hard way? – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.