Sir, – Catherine Mc Guinness makes two inaccurate statements (Opinion, October 9th).
First, her assertion that there is no concerted No campaign, is untrue. Already, there are grassroots efforts by ordinary citizens, many of them parents, to bring to the public the many reasons to vote No to this amendment.
Second, she states that the objections to this amendment concern the dilution of parental or family rights. This is not the case. From the outset, Parents for Children, has consistently argued that this amendment, like previous wordings, will remove from children the right to parental protection and advocacy. If passed, this amendment will make the State alone the supreme decider of children’s rights And when the State fails children, as it inevitably will, there is no provision for a parent or other relative to vindicate the rights of the child.
Could supporters of this amendment please tell parents why we should trust the State with our children’s rights? – Yours, etc,
Sir, – I was expecting to see something in the referendum wording about the rights of the adopted adult child to know his/her origins; about opening the files held by, mostly, religious orders. But the Minister didn’t have the guts to do that, or was warned off.
Unlike Grainne Mason (October 4th) who writes that she is a State secret, and she’s tired of it, I’m only half a State secret. I’m 50 per cent traceable only because I was given a name – if I was registered as “female”, as many were, I doubt that I’d have met my mother’s family. So Ms Mason is 100 per cent untraceable. Yet I can go into a supermarket and pick up a piece of beef and read that it is 100 per cent treaceable, a dead animal! I can see a picture of the farmer on the cover and I can read his address. Even vegetables are 100 per cent treaceable. Now pork is to be DNA-tested to ensure it’s Irish.
In Scotland since 1930 (82 years ago) and in England and Wales since 1975 (37 years ago) adopted people over 18 have been allowed to see their files. But here, I know that adoption details cannot be obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Here’s what they did in East Germany with the Stasi files: Between 1991 and 2011, about 2.75 million individuals, mostly GDR citizens, requested to see their own files. The ruling also gave people the ability to make duplicates of their documents.
Grow up Ireland, grow up the Catholic Church, grow up Ministers and Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Frances Fitzgerald. Have they no imagination? With all this talk of the Gathering and ancestry, shouldn’t we all be able to do our family tree? Shouldn’t humans as well as cattle, pigs and vegetables be 100 per cent traceable? – Yours, etc,
Sir, – I wish to respond to Vincent Browne’s assertion (Opinion, October 3rd) that the constitutional amendment on children’s rights “offers feeble protection for children from abuse and neglect and nothing at all about cherishing the children of the nation equally”. In order to support his argument, Browne cites the 1916 Proclamation, while ignoring the much more substantive 1919 Democratic Programme.
In reality both these statements of national aspiration are essentially rhetorical appeals to the public.
The real forum for children’s rights is in policy, not politics. The Mundella Report (1896) had recommended the deinstitutionalisation of children in care and the use of foster homes as a policy of normalising children’s lives in the community. The Children Act 1908 (popularly known as the “Children’s Charter”) sought to enshrine children’s rights in law.
These policy developments were effectively ignored in Ireland, where the new state adopted a more traditionalist policy towards children, based on the principle of subsidiarity. This meant that the family, the churches and the voluntary sector became responsible for child care and protection. Children are virtually invisible in the 1937 Constitution. They were relegated to the position of minor citizens in the new state – insofar as they had any citizenship at all!
Civil society did not entirely acquiesce in this state of affairs. This public concern resulted in the Cussen Report (1936), which nonetheless exonerated the reformatory and industrial school system. During the 1950s and 1960s the Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers (JCWSSW) continued the campaign for reform of the system.
However, it was not until Ireland became an accession state, seeking membership of the European Union, that our human rights record in relation to children became a public issue. There followed the OECD Report (1966) and the Kennedy Report (1970). The result was the gradual closure of the reformatory and industrial schools system and its replacement by a community-based children’s service, underpinned by the Child Care Act 1991. It took another four decades to tell the truth. In 2009 the Ryan Report exposed the human rights tragedy of our institutional child protection system, managed by the Catholic Church.
While the Children Act 1991 is an important milestone, it has not been possible to offer an effective child protection service because of lack of children’s rights in the 1937 Constitution, as is clearly evident in the 2010 Roscommon Report. The Baby Ann case (2006), as Browne fully concedes, adds further urgent evidence to the case for the children’s rights amendment, so that adoptive parents can have watertight security.
Browne is right to argue that there needs to be more redistributive justice in favour of children. The problem with his argument is that can’t happen until children are fully recognised as citizens.
The 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (to which Ireland is a signatory) sets out the international standard for children’s rights.
Its philosophy rests on the three Ps: provision, protection and participation. The constitutional amendment sets out to enshrine these principles in our social system. It is essentially an emancipatory proposal that seeks to provide children with meaningful citizenship in Ireland. It merits the support of every adult citizen as a substantive human rights initiative and genuine means of redressing past wrongs through inserting children’s rights into the Constitution. – Yours, etc,