Sir, – David Farrell offers an insightful perspective on citizens' assemblies and the need to ensure tangible outcomes from their deliberations ("We may have overdone it on citizens' assemblies", Opinion & Analysis, February 16th).
Just last year, the citizens’ assembly made a series of crucial recommendations on gender equality, ranging from the need to amend our Constitution to delete sexist language, to ensuring radical reform of childcare and ending the gender pay gap. As chairperson of the new Oireachtas special committee on gender equality, I look forward to working with parliamentary colleagues and others over coming months in examining how to implement these reforms. It is our responsibility as legislators to take the assembly’s work further in delivering a more equal society – a tangible outcome we should all be proud to achieve. – Yours, etc,
IVANA BACIK TD,
Leinster House,
Dublin 2.
A chara, – At their most effective, citizens’ assemblies should strengthen democracy and civic participation in decision-making. My research indicates that members of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment were empowered by the assembly’s deliberations to recommend an extensive framework for constitutional and legislative reform to government in advance of the referendum on abortion in 2018.
In order for the citizens’ assemblies on biodiversity, a Dublin mayor, education and drugs to be worthwhile, it is timely, as Prof David Farrell does, to ask if the model in Ireland is following international best practice, and how we can innovate these deliberative processes to ensure that their recommendations are taken seriously and contribute to greater trust between politicians and citizens.– Is mise,
URSULA QUILL,
School of Law,
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2.