Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I want to start off this debate, like other speakers, by extending my condolences to the family of Daniel McAnaspie. I met his family some weeks ago. They were terribly concerned about what had happened to him and dreadfully distressed about the manner in which they believed he had been failed and the family had been failed by the HSE. It is particularly sad and poignant that this motion is being taken this evening at a time when his remains have been found, essentially in a ditch on farmland in County Meath, and before he is buried.

I also think it is particularly inappropriate and obscene that in the Government amendment tabled tonight the Government congratulates itself on the manner in which it has essentially implemented our child care provisions. I quote from the Government amendment, which states that it "commends the Government for prioritising the promotion and protection of the welfare and the rights of children". I believe, in the context of everything we have learned following the publication of the reports into the tragic lives of Tracey Fay and David Foley and the large number of young people who have died in care about whom reports have not yet been published, the numbers of whom I now believe to be greater than the 23 numbered by the Minister some weeks ago in this House, that it is an obscenity that the Government felt the need to commend itself in this way.

Not only is it an obscenity, it is politically indefensible in the context not only of the tragic death of Daniel McAnaspie, but in the context of the damning report of the Ombudsman for Children which made two findings of maladministration or unsound administration against the Office of the Minister for Health and Children and nine such findings against the HSE with regard to the utter failure to ensure that the 1999 child protection guidelines be uniformly applied throughout the State. At the very least, I would have expected the Government and the Minister to have sufficient insight not to include that in their motion.

I do welcome the fact that we have this motion, in the sense that it yet again brings the need for a children's referendum before the House. I regret that it has been necessary for it to be tabled. Indeed, I would say that I expected, following the work we did in our all-party committee, that within a short period of time the Government would have named a date for the holding of the referendum for the simple reason that this committee was formed to facilitate an accommodation being reached between Government and Opposition parties. Both the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Minister for Health and Children, and their predecessors, were members of the committee so that they could liaise with Government, with Cabinet and with the Attorney General concerning the deliberations of the committee, the progress being made and the nature of agreements being reached.

Indeed, I can well recall the Minister of State, Deputy Andrews, coming back to the committee and it affording him extra time because, during the course of our deliberations on the form of constitutional amendment to propose, he was consulting with and obtaining advices from the Attorney General, so I take less than seriously what we are now being told about the complexities of it.

I want to say one other thing about the motion that is before the House for fear there is any misunderstanding outside the House. It may not generally be understood outside the House that the entitlement of parties in this House to propose motions rotates. Fine Gael has an entitlement to propose Private Members' motions. The Labour Party, on a separate occasion, proposes motions. On other occasions, the Labour Party and Sinn Féin join together to propose motions. Tonight happens to be one of those nights. I want to say, on behalf of Fine Gael, had we been invited to sign tonight's motion by the Labour Party and Sinn Féin, we would have done so. I regret the fact that we were not asked to do so. I am assuming that was simply an oversight by the coincidence of the rotation of these things, but we would have been very happy to sign the motion that is before the House. This motion has the full support of Fine Gael.

For many years I campaigned, both inside and outside this House, for a constitutional referendum in relation to children. I believe that the form of wording we now have which was proposed by the committee, in respect of which I burned the midnight oil many evenings to try to see could I contribute in a constructive manner, together with my Fine Gael colleagues, to bring about a form of wording on which we were all agreed, is the best possible wording. Not only have we achieved a political consensus, we have achieved a form of wording which reflects our obligations under the United Nations convention on the rights of the child and which extends to children far greater constitutional protection than they have at present.

It does something which we have not done appropriately yet in our Constitution. It recognises the primacy and the importance of the family and, indeed, of parents with regard to their children while recognising the importance, where families are in difficulties, of the State proportionately intervening within the family. In a constitutional sense, at the moment the State has two choices. One either stands aside and allows a child at risk essentially to remain at risk or take what I describe as a "nuclear option" and move to have a child taken into care. There are provisions within our child care legislation at present, for example, for the making of supervision orders, which in the constitution of the marital family may have some questionable constitutional content.

What this proposal does is seek to ensure that we protect the rights of parents while also protecting the best interest of children and ensuring that where children are at risk, there is a proportionate intervention permitted and allowed for and mandated by our fundamental constitutional law. I believe there is an urgent need to prioritise this reform.

I do not take seriously what the Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews, tells us about all of the deliberations that need to take place and the length of time that this is all going to take. I am a Member of this House who watched within a space of a short few months the Government managing to create and pass through this House the NAMA legislation - one of the most detailed, complex pieces of legislation I have ever seen in my parliamentary life. Legislation which has profound consequences in the financial area was given priority. No such priority is being afforded to the protection of children, despite all the scandals, the failings of the church and the failings of the State, as clearly documented over the past decade. I find it extraordinary that priority is not yet being extended. The Government pays lip service to the protection of children and the rights of children but fails to deliver when delivery is required.

I was most interested in listening to the Minister of State, Deputy Andrews and to the Minister of State, Deputy White, to whom I will revert in a moment, address us on the first and second interim reports. Deputy Andrews told us, misleadingly, that the Government is prioritising legislation on using soft information for vetting purposes. The first report of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children published in September 2008 asked the Government, across party lines, to publish that legislation by December 2008. That legislation is not being prioritised.

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