Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy will appreciate that is not totally within my control. We will have to try to resolve that in the House as well. I will give the Deputy my view and the Government's view on this. We gave a commitment last spring that we would have a children's rights referendum within a year. I would like to try to honour that. We have set up a committee with terms of reference. I understand it has come to a compromise that it will be five months before we can finalise it and that would put it back to the end of April. The Minister of State, Deputy Brendan Smith, briefed me on this yesterday. Then, there has to be a referendum Bill and in regard to the summer, that would make matters very tight. Regardless of the other referendum, it would be very unlikely that we would have two referendums in one year or even within any foreseeable timeframe. If this is not held in tandem with the other referendum next year, then it will be pushed back. In the event, that would be unfair to the NGOs who are being pressed on this. I gave a commitment two years ago that we would deal with this issue.

As the Deputy knows, we have to deal with the other issue in 2008, albeit on no particular date. I should like to see the work being undertaken by the all-party committee dealing with the constitutional amendment on children completed as speedily as possible, so that the two referendums may be held at the same time. Our practice here has been to try to reach agreement in so far as we can on the holding of referendums. It would be preferable to hold them together, if we can.

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