Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald, on her achievement in bringing the proposed constitutional amendment on children's rights before the House. It is astonishing that it has taken so long to reach this point. I echo the sentiments expressed by my colleague, Deputy Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, who stated in his opening remarks that although Sinn Féin will support the proposal, it does not nearly go far enough in terms of incorporating children's rights into the Constitution.

The amendment seeks to resolve child protection issues and the ongoing issues around adoption which have prevented marital children in very long-term care from being adopted, even where there is no chance that their parents will ever be able to provide the requisite care. However, the provision may be open to legal challenge, given that Article 41, which provides for the elevated position of the constitutional family based on marriage, will remain unchanged. The amendment will allow children to have their say in guardianship matters and will ensure their best interests are the paramount consideration in guardianship and adoption proceedings brought by the State. In terms of what the amendment seeks to achieve, that much is clear. What is also clear, however, is that it goes no further. The proposal is, by design, very limited. It was specifically framed as such by a Government which knew it was obliged to address child protection and adoption issues and that there was massive public support for enshrining the rights of children in the Constitution. There was simply no way it could further delay taking some action. The proposal was designed in such a way that the Government could be seen to act by providing the window dressing of a new constitutional article enshrining unspecified "natural and imprescriptible" rights for children, but without making actual provision for any such rights.

Let us be under no illusion about the impact of what is proposed here. The amendment will make life better for a very small number of children who are at risk, in respect of whom the State will now have a legal power to intervene. It will also make life better for those children who would otherwise languish in long-term foster care for years on end. It will, however, make no difference to children with disabilities who do not have access to the services they need. It will make no difference to children who live in poverty and go to school hungry on a daily basis. It will make no difference to the lives of children with mental health difficulties who are regularly packed off to adult wards because the State will not invest in the necessary services. The proposal establishes no right to health care, no right to make a child's best interests the paramount concern in all matters concerning them, no right to special needs assistants, and no right to be schooled in adequate accommodation instead of prefabricated buildings. There will still be homeless children sleeping on Dawson Street and Grafton Street after the amendment is passed because they will still have no right to shelter. The State will continue to fail all of these children. To the vast majority of children in this country, the amendment will be meaningless and devoid of any tangible benefit.

The crux of the matter, of course, is that rights cost money, and Fine Gael and the Labour Party do not believe in investing in children's rights. If they had any interest in doing so, the annual Estimates for each Department would look very different. If they had a real commitment to children's rights, the formula of words for the constitutional amendment would incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into domestic law. Enshrining rights and implementing them costs money, however, and would require a wholesale overhaul of how we tax and spend at Government level. In other words, it would require a radical shift in thinking, which, as we know, will not happen. Instead, the Government will keep cutting expenditure until people are forced to give up everything. Sinn Féin has questioned the Government before on the number of children who have been voluntarily placed in the care of the State because their parents can no longer financially cope with raising them. We are told repeatedly that no child is ever taken into care because of poverty, but that simply is not true.

Notwithstanding these deficiencies and the narrowness of its remit, the constitutional amendment deserves support because it will make some children's lives better, and that is worth it. It represents a beginning on the long road to incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into Irish law and ensuring children have rights to health, housing and education and to have their best interests the paramount concern in all decisions that involve them. While it is not sufficient in itself to address the issue of children's rights, it does acknowledge the potential for children to have rights. After the referendum, when the Labour Party and Fine Gael have washed their hands of these issues, we will continue to call for a guarantee of children's rights to shelter, an adequate living standard and health care. We will work to ensure children are given rights to education, play, leisure and access to information. We will maintain our commitment to ensure, above all, that children are protected from all forms of abuse, neglect and exploitation, including special care for refugee children, safeguards for children in the criminal justice system, protection for children in employment, and protection and rehabilitation for children who have suffered exploitation or abuse of any kind. Those are the genuine safeguards towards which we will continue to strive.

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