Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

The Taoiseach has acknowledged that there were two interim reports from the joint committee dealing with a constitutional amendment on children. The committee recommended urgency on the issue of soft information, which is why that issue was extracted from the body of work to be completed by the committee. The recommendation was made in September 2008. Is there a reason why the legislation recommended across all parties and by all members of the committee has not been introduced?

The second interim report was published in May. The Taoiseach correctly states that the majority view is that the issues arising from the CC case in the Supreme Court are best dealt with by a number of measures. There were 39 recommendations, including a call for significant legislative rather than constitutional change. Since May, has the Government come to a conclusion on going down the route of the original published Twenty-eighth Amendment to the Constitution Bill 2007, which proposed to re-instate a constitutional position on statutory rape, by putting a referendum to the people on the matter or is it minded to accept the majority view in the second interim report of the committee?

See this speech in context