Professor Fiona de Londras:

In terms of constitutional analogies the UK does not work very well as Ms O'Toole has said. After five years of teaching public law in the UK I now have the trope. There is a constitution but it is not codified in one document. The courts do not have any strike down power. Every piece of legislation can be challenged under the Human Rights Act and courts will exercise varying levels of deference depending on the topic. It is not a good analogy for us because it is such a different way of thinking about the relationship between legislative and judicial power.

In response to the Deputy's first question on the possibility of excluding an item from the Constitution, I agree with Dr. Kenny that it is legally possible to exclude an item from scrutiny of the courts. Whether it is politically possible, which is what I take the Deputy to have been talking about, is an entirely different matter.