Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Government has been listening to that concern and we have had a number of debates in the Cabinet on it. The legal advice to the Government is very clear and the recommendation is to simply remove language from the Constitution. If we are going to go through a process of trying to put new language into the Constitution reflecting the importance of caring, the home and so on to replace that wording, it would certainly take some time. The Government is proposing to follow the legal advice we have while starting a conversation around the kinds of concerns outlined by the Deputy and others, including how we could deal with that in legislation. We would not be able to do what we would like to do in October if we must try to find a way to get right new language in the Constitution reflecting the really important role of caring in the home.

Instead, what we want to focus on is taking something that is inappropriate in terms of language out of the Constitution and keeping that clean and simple.

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