Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Senator's last point is extremely valid. The work must be in tandem. A decision was made by the Oireachtas to convene this committee. If I just come in, slap down a document and say here is the wording, that would be very disrespectful to the work with which this committee is engaged.

The Senator is correct; this has been glacially slow but much work has been taking place. The problem is that there has not been an agreement in terms of whether we just go with the deletion of Article 41.2 or do we replace it, and, if so, what with, how and in what elements? Much work was done in the previous Oireachtas and it fell at the last hurdle.

I feel that having heard the Oireachtas was taking the decision that a committee was going to be formed to deal with the entire Citizens' Assembly recommendations, but particularly with those ones, for me to pre-empt that with wording would have been quite confrontational. I do not think the committee would have appreciated that sort of intervention. I am very open. The reason I am here today is to work with the committee in terms of trying to identify collectively how we get past that issue of Article 41.2. I am very open and I will continue to engage with members. At some stage, however, a choice may have to be made amd it might not be everyone's preference.

I am conscious that we have had referendums in the past on issues that may have not seemed to be that contentious, which maybe did not have a very vigorous campaign and then had a low turnout. Suddenly, there is a risk to the result. I always think of the children's rights referendum, which everyone assumed would be a slam dunk and was 56% to 44%, which is far too close for comfort. The last thing we want is an approach to this amendment that becomes a bit laissez-faire but then maybe gets a bit divisive at the end and we end up losing it. Then, we will never see this change.

I am very open to working with this committee. It is important that we find agreement on the way forward, however, rather than the Government coming at one side and the Opposition or some Opposition parties coming very much from the other side.