Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The McKenna judgment on referendums does not limit the capacity of Government to explain an issue; it limits its capacity to use taxpayers' money to advocate on one side or the other. There is a crucial difference. The Supreme Court made a definitive judgment regarding the Government's mishandling of the children's referendum and many questions remain to be answered in that regard. The House has not had an opportunity to hold the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald, accountable in regard to what went on.

I refer to the last question which, again, required freedom of information requests and information gleaned thereby in order to discover that the Attorney General had corrected aspects of the Government material which subsequently was changed again, but we do not know how. Two Ministers, Deputies Varadkar and Fitzgerald, suggested the Attorney General had got it wrong - they dumped on her. The Minister, Deputy Varadkar, commented at the time that legal advice can be wrong. It was wrong but we found out through the freedom of information process that in at least one instance the Attorney General had given the correct advice, which was not followed.

In the context of future referendums, and in reviewing the Office of the Attorney General, would the Taoiseach consider that advice of the Attorney General, or any material produced by that office, should be published and made transparent? We could then see whether such material has been over-politicised by Ministers of the day, contrary to advice received from the Attorney General's office. Traditionally the Attorney General does not articulate publicly on matters of this kind. Today there is silence from the Office of the Attorney General in regard to the entire process leading up to the publication of material on the Government website. This is very unsatisfactory. Given this silence confidence in the Office has been undermined, inadvertently or otherwise, by two Ministers, which is not a good thing. We need to find out what happened in the lead-up to that referendum and why the issue was over-politicised and over-sold, unnecessarily.

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