Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

It is a privilege for every Deputy elected to this Dáil Éireann to represent our fellow Irishmen and women. We do so knowing we are entrusted with getting our country through a difficult economic time and bringing about recovery. We are also entrusted with laying the foundations for the country's future and forging a modern, fair, compassionate and democratic society, a country that reflects the best of ourselves and a legacy of which we can be proud.

Those of us who have been elected to the Thirty-first Dáil find ourselves seeing out the closing years of Ireland's first century of independence. They have been difficult years of late, but this is also a moment in our history for renewal. It is an opportunity to ask ourselves not just what went wrong, but what we can do better, what we want our next century of independence to look like and what values will underpin our laws and the institutions that will shape our politics. When my party first proposed the holding of a constitutional convention in April 2010, it was in this spirit of renewal.

There is much in the 1937 Constitution that has served us well, but we must also acknowledge that there are many whom it has served less well, particularly the nation's children. Our Constitution is a document of the 1930s for the 1930s. It was a time when one church was considered to hold a special position and women were considered to be second class citizens. In many ways, Irish society today would be unrecognisable to the original drafters of the 1937 Constitution. Ireland has been transformed by the liberalisation of our laws, almost universal acknowledgement of a person's right to a private life, equal rights for women, the fact that 17% of our population was born outside the State and the more personal role of religion in people's lives. The pace of change in social attitudes has consistently outpaced the laws governing them.

The constitutional convention is an opportunity to examine how we as a people want to respond to these societal changes in a measured, fair and compassionate way. It is also an historic opportunity to take an independent look at our electoral system and to ask how well it serves our democracy. These are no small tasks, but it is right that the Constitution, which belongs to the people, should be open to deliberative and thoughtful consideration by the people.

The process that we are proposing is radical. This mechanism for the consideration of the Constitution has never been done before. It invites that two thirds of the membership of the constitutional convention will be drawn at random from our citizens, people who are on the electoral register. It has never been the case before that our Parliament exercised such a vote of confidence and trust in citizens that we invited them to take part in a constitutional convention to consider the Constitution's future form. We need to reflect on this fact. When we engage in oppositional politics in the House, Members are sometimes blinded to radical change, such as the change we are effecting this evening. We are establishing a constitutional convention in which individual citizens will form the majority.

Members have suggested that we should be more ambitious in terms of what the convention will consider. People who have been Deputies for a long time have had experience of the various all-party committees on the Constitution, the reports of which line bookshelves. They are worthy considerations of constitutional issues. We have decided to give the convention a mandate to examine specific issues in the Constitution and report on them within 12 months. The Government is required to respond to that report within four months. The convention is not confined to the issues listed in this motion. Rather, it will be enabled to recommend additional matters for consideration.

As Deputy White stated, these are no small matters. For example, reducing the voting age from 18 years to 17 years is a radical measure. I remember campaigning for the right to vote at 18 years and being denied that right when the then Government chose to hold the election before those who were entitled to vote as a result of a constitutional change were included on the electoral register. Same-sex marriage, which has been discussed repeatedly, is no small issue. The position of women in our society has long been debated and is no small matter. Many Deputies have been preoccupied with the question of how to increase women's participation in politics constitutionally and how to make the Parliament genuinely representative of the population in gender terms. The participation in presidential elections of citizens who are resident outside the State is no small issue. All of these are very substantial issues. Deputy Alex White mentioned the removal of blasphemy from our Constitution. When such issues are addressed by the constitutional convention and if and when they are addressed by way of a referendum, we will all discover that in the minds of the people who will vote on these matters they are not small or minor issues.

The process of change must be done step-by-step. Sometimes when an issue like our Constitution is raised, we may look to consider it in its entirety, and sometimes, when we attempt to change everything, we change nothing. This is a proposal where the Government committed to having a constitutional convention and it is to be established as we indicated it would, with the two thirds participation of individual citizens. It is being given a mandate to go through these issues, examine them and make recommendations.

Civil society, interest groups and representative bodies will be included in the process. It is clear from the terms of the motion and the way the constitutional convention is being set up that civil society will have a role in this process. It will involve dialogue and discussion. The Constitution belongs to the citizens and the people and that is why the membership of the constitutional convention is composed of individual citizens and those who are elected by citizens. The convention will take submissions and hear ideas, and I have no doubt there will be very active engagement between the representative bodies in civil society and the convention.

We have committed in the terms for the constitutional convention to a timeframe in which it will do its work. With the issues set down for consideration by the convention, there should be a report within 12 months, and that is challenging when dealing with complex issues. It is also important that we set down a timeframe within which the Government will respond to the recommendations of the constitutional convention, with the period in question set at four months.

It has been suggested that this is less than radical but we are seeing a process of change being progressed on a scale that we have not seen before. There are issues on which we have decided to have separate constitutional referenda, including children's rights. A referendum will be held on that in the autumn so that there is an opportunity to put into the Constitution particular rights for children. The Seanad issue must also be decided by the people. First, it must be decided by the people whether our country of approximately 4.5 million people should have one or two parliamentary Chambers. That is why there will be a separate referendum on the issue.

The constitutional convention is an opportunity for a wide and inclusive mode of addressing our democracy. It is a way not just of engaging the citizens who will participate but of having a wider national conversation about the kind of country we want to live in and the principles by which we want to live. It is an exciting innovation in Irish public life. I have no doubt it will challenge each of us individually as citizens and collectively as part of the political system. Ultimately, our democracy will always depend on the willingness of individuals to perform the duties of citizenship, and the Constitution will once more call on us to play our part. I commend the motion to the House.

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