Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I know where the Minister is coming from and that he wants to do something in the context of the anniversary that is coming up. In terms of the Minister's point about the Citizens' Assembly looking at these things in more depth, they are not mutually exclusive. The Minister will have heard the call from the National Women's Council of Ireland for a public consultation process. We have not heard from the council yet but as I understand it, the council's proposal is for a much shorter-term consultation process on these issues. What is the Minister's attitude to that? We can have both.

We can move to have a constitutional referendum next year, perhaps in tandem with the local and European elections but also put some forum in place, in advance of that, to have a public conversation. We are starting that here, teasing out some of the issues but perhaps we could bring that to another forum in order that organisations which have made submissions and considered these matters already could feed into that conversation in order to arrive at a wording. There are some wording proposals available that might be appropriate and which should be weighed up. Could we not do that, in recognition of the active process that took place around the eighth amendment and so on?