Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Arnold, who, it is widely agreed, has been an excellent chair of the Constitutional Convention.

It is not an easy job to keep everything on time. I was very impressed with that. The debates can cover so many issues under any heading and he showed a great ability to keep matters under control. As a member of the Constitutional Convention I have been present during the consideration of areas that have come before it and these have been important issues, many of which Mr. Arnold has referred to.

The issues considered include the reduction of the presidential term of office to five years and the alignment with local and European elections; reduction of the voting age to 16; review of the Dáil electoral system; Irish citizens' right to vote at Irish embassies in presidential elections; provisions for same-sex marriage; amendment to the clause on the role of women in the home; encouraging greater participation of women in public life; increasing women's participation in politics; and the removal of the offence of blasphemy from the Constitution. This is the sixth report, now in draft and awaiting publication.

These matters were all worth considering and debating. While I and others would not necessarily have fully agreed with the results and recommendations on all issues, for example I did not fully agree with the reduction of the voting age to 16, the debates on all these issues were extremely worthwhile. I join with Mr. Arnold's comments on the scepticism and cynicism that existed in advance. Long before I knew I would be appointed to it, I was somewhat sceptical of the creation of such a convention. It has been widely accepted, as Mr. Arnold said, that is has been a great success. Even journalists who attended the convention and who had been cynical or sceptical about its creation have accepted it has been a worthwhile pursuit.

From the outside I was curious about how such a citizens' assembly would work, having seen the We the Citizens initiative come before and the Canadian citizens' assembly. In both cases politicians did not have such a direct role. The make-up of the convention, with two thirds randomly selected citizens and one third parliamentarians, proved to be one of its greatest strengths. It opened up real debate and allowed the politicians to explain the practicalities of certain ideas from a legislative perspective without being too imposing or steering the convention too much. That was a fear at the beginning. In the first few meetings the politicians spoke more than the lay members. As Mr. Arnold said, many of the citizens showed themselves well capable of voicing their views and opinions throughout the process. I greatly agree with the inclusion of the Northern Ireland members. I thought that was very positive and the certainly added to the debate.

As Mr. Arnold said, the convention has published five reports with the sixth due shortly, and the Dáil has already debated three of them. The Government has committed to holding referenda in 2015 on same-sex marriage, a reduction in the voting age and the need to amend the language in Article 41.2 on the role of women in the in home. Although there has been much talk about referendum fatigue, I hope we will address this during this Government. There were many interesting debates. One of particular interest to many of us women was on female participation in politics. We heard that Ireland has one of the lowest levels of female representation in the EU with just 15% of Dáil Deputies being female. Almost 50% of the members of the Constitutional Convention were female. During a discussion I said at times I felt there was an inherent sexism in politics and remarked on the comments that are regularly made that many men do not even realise are inherently sexist. While this fight will have to be fought for many years, the debate was very useful and sparked a wider debate in the public that is welcome and needs to be discussed.

The Constitutional Convention was a major success and I hope to see it repeated in years to come. Holding it every three years would be a practical timeframe and that should be considered. I thank Mr. Arnold for his confident stewardship as he chaired the convention and to the Oireachtas Members who participated and the members of the public, who were tremendously engaged throughout the process. As Mr. Arnold said, the engagement from the public at large was excellent and social media and the website facilitated this. I commend Mr. Arnold, Mr. Art O'Leary and the rest of the team on their work. As well as everything else they were extremely nice and courteous to work with.