Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I again confirm that Sinn Féin will proactively commend this constitutional amendment to the electorate. I call on all parties and all Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas to join in a united campaign urging a “Yes” vote on 10 November. This proposed constitutional change represents an important step forward, affirming for the first time in our Constitution that children have rights and in their own right. We in Sinn Féin, of course, see this as a beginning, not an end in itself. This wording will afford children specific rights to care and well-being, as well as the right to be heard in certain matters concerning them.

The State will have both the duty and the power to intervene on behalf of all children at risk, regardless of their parents' marital status. The State, of course, must also step up to the plate. The record of past neglect and failures quite understandably leaves a confidence deficit in the minds of many good citizens who would wish to support this referendum proposal. Accordingly, it is the duty of the Minister of Children and Youth Affairs, and of her colleagues in government, to give not only the strongest guarantees of her intention to resource not just adequately but generously the respective agencies and services that will be entrusted to give effect to the letter and spirit of this constitutional change but to spell out in detail the human and other resources that she will provide on its successful passage. The last speaker also raised this point. I hope the Government will come forward with firm and clear commitments. The resourcing of all the elements of this constitutional change will be critical to the real measure of its success. As I said early, if we as citizens are to entrust the care of those children whose families can no longer care for them to the State, then the State's care regimes must be accountable and transparent, as well as fit for purpose.

Enshrining children's rights, as this wording proposes, will ensure the best interests of the child will be paramount in matters concerning their safety, welfare and guardianship. It will be up to us, and to legislators in the coming years, to build on this valuable platform as we strive to ensure the best interests of the child become paramount in all matters concerning the child, a cornerstone of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I look forward to the day - hopefully in the not-too-distant future - when much of what we have argued for becomes the shared intent of proposals and measures in this area presented to this House.

I am proud of the role Sinn Féin played in the all-party engagement that led to the publication of our agreed report in February 2010. I am also proud of our consistent and balanced engagement with the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Fitzgerald, and with her predecessor Ministers of State with responsibility for children. I commend the Minister for her undoubted commitment to all we are addressing here, as well as her tenacity in this regard. Much has been achieved in a short time, for which I commend the Minister, and look forward to continue working with her towards the realisation of so much in children’s interests.

The need to assert and to confirm the rights of children in our Constitution is above party political considerations. Accordingly, we now go before the electorate together in common cause and with our shared commitment to cherishing all the children of the nation equally. Let us look forward to the campaigning ahead and, hopefully, an overwhelming endorsement of these proposals.

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