Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, United Left) | Oireachtas source

On Friday, people are being asked to engage in what I would deem a very meaningless exercise, by which I mean the referendum on reducing the age of eligibility to stand for president to 21 years. It is a nonsense. Everybody knows this is a sop to the Constitutional Convention, although many involved in the Constitutional Convention would not support this referendum at this time. There is no way anyone in their 20s will receive the necessary nominations through the political system in order to be able to stand, and that is a fact.

It would have made much more sense to put the amendment which is proposed in this Bill to a referendum at this time. After all, 85% of the convention delegates supported the idea of putting the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights into the Constitution. An amendment along these lines could make differences to people's lives. For example, Article 7 of the covenant refers to a decent living for people and their families. Having this in the Constitution would assist those campaigning for a living wage of €11.25 an hour, would assist in the struggle against zero-hour or low hour contracts, would assist in protecting single parents who are facing cuts in their income this July and would lend itself to the struggle against precarious employment. Article 11 recognises the right to an adequate standing standard of living, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and continuous improvement in living standards.

Such rights in the Constitution would clash sharply with evictions and with the austerity measures which have massively increased poverty and deprivation in our society. The right to free education, dealt with in Article 13, clashes with third level fees and the cost of sending children to school at all levels in our society. The state of the health services, especially our mental health services, hardly matches up to requirements of the covenant on health.

This raises the question of whether the reluctance of the Government to put this forward in a referendum is due to the problem it might pose for the type of economy and society the Government is pursuing. This is a low pay, low tax, low social services, neoliberal model of the future. In 2013, Portugal tried to implement a budget which was being forced on it by the troika but the Portuguese court was able to protect certain sections of society. The court rejected a number of measures in the 2013 budget relating to cuts in state pensions and public sector pay, as well as cuts in sickness and unemployment benefits, while upholding a tax surcharge and a cut in overtime pay rates for public sector workers. The court also struck down a number of the articles of a Bill which would have been made it easier to lay off civil servants, holding that it violated the principle of prohibiting dismissal without just cause, the principle of proportionality in regard to the restriction of the right to employment security and the principle of trust. On the latter, cuts to civil service pensions provided in the 2014 budget were also struck down on the same basis, namely, that they had affected aspects of social, economic and cultural rights.

While supporting the Bill, I want to make some more general points in regard to the Constitution. To come back to the point I made earlier, the referendum on the age reduction for President is not seen as serious. When one talks to anyone on the doorsteps, they are not interested in it as it does not impact on their lives in any shape or form. Unfortunately, I think it will be resoundingly defeated and, in the process, it will increase the cynicism of people in regard to politics.

We need to stop making piecemeal changes to a Constitution which is clearly not fit for purpose in today's society. If we need to have at least one or two referenda every year, something is wrong. We should have an elected convention reflecting the different strata and age groups in society, with a mandate to draw up a new constitution. This should reflect, not the 1930s and an emphasis on the rights of the Catholic Church, private property and the State, but society and its needs today, with an emphasis on the common good and the rights of citizens. We do not need to have everything under the sun in a constitution. It can be shorter, simpler and more suitable to a democratic, secular republic in the 21st century.

I fully support this Private Members' Bill and I thank Deputy Pringle and Deputy Healy for putting it forward. I see no reason for the Government not to accept it and not to try to do something before the next election, although I think that is highly unlikely. However, I would welcome it if the Government could accept it. The Labour Party has put this forward twice in the last decade. We would expect the same people who advocated it to accept it at this stage in the Dáil.

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