Aideen Hayden (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I ask for a minor indulgence as I must make a statement in order to ask a question. I would also like to welcome Mr. Arnold and his team and I thank them for the work they have done. I am proud of the fact that the convention started as a Labour Party initiative arising from the speech of the Tánaiste, Deputy Eamon Gilmore, to the Labour Party conference in 2010. It was then adopted in the programme for Government and it is important to recognise the contribution of the Labour Party.

I am also proud to be a member elected by the parliamentary Labour Party to the convention. I enjoyed it. I would like to pay tribute to members of civil society who have engaged with convention. They deserve a special mention.

The Constitution has been a living document and in previous decades it was down to the Supreme Court to push the envelope in establishing rights under the Constitution. I was most struck at the Constitutional Convention by the extent to which Irish people have moved beyond where they were. As an example, the proposal was to reduce the voting age to 17 and the convention went further and said it should be 16. Excellent debate took place on the role of women, the importance of gender neutrality, the importance of wider society and the role of carers. My question arises from the significant issues that arose. The most exciting work of the convention is still to come and I am excited by the idea of the economic, social and cultural rights. In various aspects of debate, the role of the family in modern day Irish society arose and how we must go beyond the traditional definition of family. A number of matters were put to us and we had to vote on which matters should go forward. Arising from the debate, it is difficult to see how we could not have a debate on the definition of the family in the Constitution. Does Mr. Arnold favour extending the terms of the convention to discuss all matters that came through, including the role of the family, the issue of church and state as referred to by Senator Bacik and wider discussion on the environment? Does Mr. Arnold favour extending the convention to focus on those issues that arose through the convention's discussions and in respect of which it might be possible to say we could not holistically look at the convention's work without discussing?