Mrs. Justice Catherine McGuinness:

I do not really think there is any specific way in which one can deal with these things. The difficulty about taking cases on any of these articles is that so many of them involve public expenditure. It is clear in the basic laws of the country that public expenditure is the task of the Oireachtas, led by the Government. The courts are unlikely to order public expenditure, other than in certain cases in which money is owed to citizens. I mention as an example a case in which a large number of elderly people in nursing homes were wrongly charged a fee for their care. That question arose as a constitutional area which was dealt with by the Supreme Court, which ordered that all the money should be paid back to the elderly people who had been wrongly charged. This judgment was unpopular enough from the Government's point of view. That kind of decision can be made.

I suggest there is a good case to be made for making a supportive overall statement about care in general. Care occurs inside and outside the family. Young people and older people are cared for. I would not by any means entirely agree with setting that out in the Constitution as a kind of ideal value, but that is a separate thing from fiddling about by amending the article that is in place now. It is better to say that we will get rid of this and put in what we really want. That is the simplest way of approaching it. On the other hand, I do not see a case arising in which a carer tries to establish a case. I would also fear that we might get a kind of unbalanced thing along the lines of what Deputy O'Callaghan set out. It is almost better to try to fight for what we want on the political and legislative front. It is not that we do not want it - we do - but it would be a mistake to think that by putting it into the Constitution, we would be doing more than saying this is a value we hold.

When we start looking at Article 45 of the Constitution, we find all sorts of splendid things that we should be concentrating on. People do not take much notice of it because it cannot be fought in the courts. I agree with the Deputy O'Callaghan about the subsection of Article 45 from which he quoted, but it is doubtful that we are willing to embark on a referendum to take the word "sex" out of it. We have to remember what we use the Constitution for. If we are going to include a clause relating to the value of care inside or outside the home, we should use that almost as a directive, similar to Article 45, to persuade the political parties and Independents as they come up that this is a policy they should be aiming for. I am afraid that in such circumstances, we would have to keep fighting on the ground to get the actual legislation and the actual expenditure that is looked for.