Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Forgive me if I missed anything. I am on three committees at present. However, I heard Senator Ruane earlier, who got ahead of me and asked my question, which I know was discussed, about the mechanism for discussing wording and the policy in that regard. Obviously, the Department has a strong role in policy, and the Department of Justice has done some of this work in the past. I am aware the Minister is doing a review to see what the current position is. Ultimately, however, similar to the conversation we had in our last meeting with the National Women's Council of Ireland, it is about the constitutional meaning of words. Much of this is caught up in the advisory counsel part of the Attorney General's office and the specific individuals there who will ultimately assess any wording that is produced in draft form by either the Department or the committee.

It may expedite the matter, and I suggest this would be better done in private session, to bring in the relevant advisory counsel at the earliest stage to talk through the implications of the words that have already been used. We talked about the word "community" at the last meeting. There is an opportunity in Article 41 on the family for a simple deletion of "based on marriage". What are the implications of that? Are we prepared to go for that politically? Probably, yes, but is that the simplest and most efficient way of achieving these different things? There has to be a mechanism by which we can discuss the wording, because that is the conversation that is going to lead to it, with the advisory counsel side, in particular, and perhaps somebody from the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, OPC, and to be able to have that discussion freely and openly to tease it out. That is what is going to deliver the wording at the end.

We will be dependent on the Minister to be able to achieve that. The committee can write and ask for it, but we would be dependent on the Minister's assistance to get it over the line and to be able to facilitate that type of dialogue, with officials or the Minister present if that were suitable. We are talking about referendums next year, ideally. The committee certainly is. Of course, we do not have a wording so the Minister is talking about a potential or possible referendum, but that is the political objective from the committee's perspective. The only way to get to that is to be able to tease out the wording in that practical way. In my experience, and I have done this a few times, that is the most efficient thing to do - to be able at an early stage either to rule out words that just are not going to work or to know that we can play with them as part of what we are trying to do. Would the Minister be open to that?