Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

At this stage, maybe it is important to remember what is being proposed to be removed from the Constitution. It is that the State shall endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home. A friend of mine with whom I went to primary school and I were sitting back over Christmas discussing life generally and musing on the fact that when we went to national school in Scarriff, the vast majority of children in that school had one working parent and one parent in the home. In the vast majority of cases, it was a father who was working - many fathers worked in the chipboard factory in Scarriff - while the mother was in the home. My friend made the point that this is not possible now because in the vast majority of cases, it would not be possible for one parent to support a family, put a roof over its head and meet the costs required to support a family now.

One might ask how this came about if this was in the Constitution. Time has moved on and not just in that regard, which many might regard as a negative. In many families, including my own, a career is very important to a mother and it does not have to be a choice between neglecting one's so-called duties - because they are duties that are shared - and going out to earn money. Sometimes people go out to work because a career is hugely important to them. A career is obviously as important to many women as it is to men. There are many women who want to pursue a career. Likewise there are many men who are leaving their home out of economic necessity, whose wives have careers and who would rather be in the home but have to go out because of the sheer cost of maintaining a family.

Instead of looking at that, we are going to change it. It is all well and good deciding what wording we are to propose but how will it be interpreted? Deputy Bríd Smith, who would probably be delighted to hear that I do not agree very often with her, asked how "strive" will be interpreted by the courts. This is what it comes down to because when we make changes, we do not know how they will be interpreted. This was de Valera's Constitution and many like to deride it as being old-fashioned and insulting to women. It was a very forward-looking Constitution at the time it was introduced

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