Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Deputy Carey, to the House. I also welcome this debate.

When Senator Eoghan Harris was nominated to this House, he said he went and read many speeches from the 1930s and before. I did something similar when elected 15 years ago. I was very impressed by what I read because this House is a creation of that Constitution. I was most impressed with the speeches. I hope a future reader of the speeches made in this debate, both last week and today, will consider them equally interesting. Members who participated in this debate had the opportunity to say something that, hopefully, future students will study.

Senator Bradford said he did not regard himself as an expert on the Constitution. I certainly do not consider myself an expert on it either. However, when I was a university student I had the opportunity to study constitutional law and in the 1960s when I, as a young man, was subject to 37 prosecutions for breaking the law, I found a defence under Article 44 of the Constitution. I was selling meat after 6 p.m. I remembered a little of my constitutional law, which provides that it is unlawful to discriminate on religious grounds. A statutory instrument that was passed excluded meat killed under the Jewish ritual method, kosher meat, and as it did not apply in that case I was able to use that defence to ensure I was not prosecuted for selling the meat. While I am not an expert, I was chuffed to discover this from the education I received.

It is something of a political cliché to issue a paean of praise for our Constitution on occasions such as this. I have no problem praising it. I believe that, by and large, the Constitution has done a good job, and has served the country well for the past 70 years and two months. Nevertheless, however much we approve of the Constitution, that should not blind us to its faults. We should not shrink away from the need to retire it gracefully in favour of a completely new document, if and when that need arises. I believe it does arise. Although the Constitution may have served us well over the past three generations, it has passed its "sell by" date. Instead of this seemingly endless process of amending the document as if we were patching an old quilt, it is time to go back to square one and craft a new fundamental law for this country.

Why should we do this? The most important reason is that the Constitution is a creature of its time. Ireland has changed profoundly in the 70 years since it was enacted. Trying to fit the Constitution into the Ireland of today is like trying to force a square peg into a round hole — it takes an enormous amount of unnecessary effort and the end results are always far from satisfactory. We heard some references to that today and Senator Alex White concentrated on a number of the issues. Ideally, of course, a constitution should live forever. It could do so if it were genuinely a basic law, a flexible foundation that was capable of adapting painlessly to the inevitable changes in society that could not be foreseen at the time it was written. In the real world, however, constitutions are written within the mind-set of their own time, and that mind-set always carries a load of baggage that becomes more and more inappropriate as time passes.

For this reason, rather than expecting our Constitution to be perfect and capable of lasting forever, we should admit that any constitution is likely to go out of date sooner or later and we should be ready to promptly retire the existing text and make a fresh attempt to define the nation's basic law. The Ireland that gave rise to the Constitution had a fundamentally different view of its place in the wider world than it has now. It was an inward-looking, isolationist, protectionist State, driven by the belief that it could pursue its destiny in a self-contained cocoon of cultural, political and moral values. One need only read the words of the Constitution to confirm that.

The Constitution was written in the early days of the State, when it was a priority to underline and copperfasten our sovereign independence as a nation. The State had been in existence for only approximately 15 years at that time. Seventy years later, however, we share our sovereignty with the wider European Union of which we are a willing member. It is inappropriate that such a radical shift in the structure of our governance should be acknowledged only by means of an enabling amendment, as occurs when an EU treaty forces us to include it and as will be required by the reform treaty. Our basic law should now fully acknowledge the fundamentally changed situation and set out a changed framework of governance that will guarantee an efficient and a democratic system of government for Ireland as part of Europe — a system that balances both our national aspiration for autonomy and our need to play a full role in the wider community of which we are proud to be a part.

Also radically changed since 1937 is the nature of our relationship with the part of Ireland that is outside our jurisdiction. Before the amendments made after the Good Friday Agreement, our Constitution was undeniably irredentist. It claimed territory that had been lost. With the inclusion of the amendments, we have a Constitution that is, equally undeniably, partitionist. We need a new document that will rise above such temporary issues, and which positions our State in a value-free space that is flexible enough to incorporate any changes that may occur in the future and is neutral enough to be fully acceptable to anyone living on the island.

An equally fundamental change in our society since 1937 relates to matters of gender equality. In the 1930s a man's wife was regarded as his chattel, all female civil servants were required to give up their jobs when they married and it was so unconceivable that a woman could become President of Ireland that the Constitution brazenly repeatedly refers to "he", "his", and "him" so many times that no reasonable person today can read it without squirming in embarrassment.

Social partnership, which now plays such a large part in how the country is run, had not even been dreamed of in 1937. Instead, there were the corporatist theories of the 1930s, of which the Seanad is a living relic. A central part of our system of governance therefore takes place on a totally extra-constitutional basis, while within the framework of the Constitution the bones of a long-dead social theory continue to rattle. We need to bring social partnership into the constitutional space and design a second legislative chamber — if we are to have one and I believe we should — in a way that reflects our democratic ideals rather than insults them. I am not happy that the structure of this House and how its Members are elected are correct. A fundamental change is required in that regard. That would require a constitutional change and we should consider that as an objective.

I have mentioned a few matters but I could point to further aspects of the Constitution that are frozen in the aspic of the 1930s, and point also to aspects of our present way of life that are unacknowledged by the Constitution and should be. That is our responsibility. I believe I have said enough to establish my basic point, that we are operating under a constitution that no longer serves our purposes as a nation. It is high time to retire the 1937 Constitution, place it with reverence and thanks on the bookshelves of history and move on to better things. It is a challenge but it is time we faced it.

I welcome this debate because it gives us the opportunity to discuss matters such as this, which otherwise would not come to the forefront.