Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not intend to comment on any speculation about persons wishing or not wishing to chair the constitutional convention. It requires a particular kind of person with experience. For that reason and, as I said in my reply, given the consideration of all of the names submitted by Opposition parties and others, I hope we can conclude that fairly soon. I will advise Opposition leaders in advance of making an announcement about it.

With regard to the response from the Government, what I have said is that when the convention starts its work, it will look first at two issues. It is not that there are no exceptionally difficult constitutional issues, but the aim is to see how the constitutional convention will actually operate and whether it can do its work effectively. These meetings will take place on Saturdays, although that may change depending on what the constitutional convention group wants to do, with a lot of other work done in between by the backup system of the administration to the convention.

What I have said is that the Government will respond within a four-month period. I will not give Deputy Martin a blanket guarantee that everything that comes with a positive recommendation from the constitutional convention for a referendum will be accepted by the Government. Nor do I want to say that this is a process of having discussions after which recommendations come out one way or the other and, if they are positive, they might or might not be accepted by the Government, while, if they are negative, the Government might still go ahead and hold a referendum on a particular issue. I foresee a number of other referendums in the period ahead. As I said, the constitutional convention itself can decide, after doing its body of work, that there are a number of other areas on which it would like to make recommendations to the Government, and it is fully free to do that.

With regard to the possibility of the gay and lesbian group being represented at the constitutional convention, we took a clear decision, which I outlined to Opposition parties, that we would confine this to citizens, taken in a proper format from the electoral register, as well as public representatives from both the Oireachtas and the parties and from among those represented in the Northern Ireland Executive. Of course, that does not mean somebody who is a gay or lesbian person cannot attend the convention, cannot send in submissions online - a facility that will be available - or cannot attend as a group to make a case to the constitutional convention, comprised of public representatives and citizens, so that this can be heard. That was a deliberate decision in order that we would not have a long list of organisations and groups saying "Well, if one is represented, we should also be represented". The point the Deputy makes applies across the board to any group or organisation, which would be entitled to attend, send in submissions to or give evidence for consideration by the convention. From that point of view, we were clear in making the decision that, rather than letting in any one group or organisation, we would allow them all to send in submissions, evidence and so on. It may well be, in the selection of the 66 citizens, that persons from that list - although I have absolutely no control over that - are representative of different organisations, views, sectors or groups in society in general.

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