Eoghan Harris (Independent)

I had not intended to make a contribution until I heard the extraordinary and lucid exchanges between Senator Regan's fine exegesis on the background to the Constitution and the Minister's subsequent response. It is not often that one is unwilling to leave the Chamber. While I had planned to attend to more urgent business in my office, as I listened to them I realised there was nothing better on the box, so to speak. On a day on which the Oireachtas concerns itself with what I believe future historians will consider to be no more than a hill of beans — I refer to the fallout from the Mahon tribunal — it is good to be reminded of the great mountains of our democracy. During the Minister's exceptional tour de force on the historical, legislative and political aspects of the Irish Constitution, I shared Senator Rónán Mullen's urge and felt the same twitch in my fingers to take notes because he opened my eyes. Having grown up with John M. Kelly's marvellous work on the Irish Constitution, I had believed that I knew a little about the subject but I discovered the limits of my ignorance.

This has prompted me to mention my recollection of reading the great conservative historian, Michael Oakeshott. Shortly after the enactment of the Irish Constitution he undertook a comparative study of all European constitutions and considered the former to be the most perfect of them in its attempt to achieve social and political harmony at a very difficult time. The aspect of the Irish Constitution that I like, about which the Minister has reminded Members, is its modesty. Unlike the great prescriptive constitutions such as the French revolutionary injunction to liberty, equality and fraternity or the American constitution's injunction to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the Irish Constitution does not tell its citizens to do anything. It has no prescriptions for a happy and better life. It simply tells them modestly how they might live with one another in a body politic. This was a tremendous achievement. Senator Regan correctly demonstrated its origins in the Free State constitution, to which the Minister rightly paid tribute, as well as reminding Members that its origins went further back into the great home rule parliamentary tradition and to British common law.

One of the Irish Constitution's fine points is that it breathes the Christian and Graeco-Roman tradition. It is deeply informed by the Greek spirit of liberty, the Roman respect for laws and the Christian notion of social justice and harmony. We should applaud the fact that such a Christian document is so capable of serving in such secular times. We are very lucky because, whatever today's contributions lacked in quantity, they certainly made up for it in quality.