Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

On the supplementary Order Paper there is a proposal to refer the 2014 report of the Convention on the Constitution to a committee in respect of housing and the Constitution. It seems to me that we have a rash of proposals for constitutional change now. Stephen Collins in The Irish Timestoday queries whether we should scrap the Constitution completely as there are so many amendments being proposed to it.

The Constitution is not some kind of message board for a Government that floats ideas to distract us from the real issues. The Constitution is the basic set of rules by which this society is operated. It does not need to be tinkered with constantly. Let me take one example, and I am sure I will offend some people in the House who are on the side of political correctness, the idea of giving votes to people at the age of 16 years is rubbish. If it is illegal to sell a person of 16 years a scratch card for the national lottery, if they cannot go into a public house, if they are incapable of entering into a contract in law, and if the asylum seekers of 16 years are counted as children, the idea of giving children a vote is nonsense. It is a distraction. Furthermore it will be defeated comprehensively in the same way as the foolish idea of reducing the age of the presidential candidates from 35 years to 21 years was defeated by the people. We need less of this gimmickry nonsense. The proposal to abolish the Seanad was not taken out of any conviction, it was a pure voting getting stunt at a particular time in Fine Gael's internal politics, nothing more. I suggest that instead of taking all of these proposals seriously and talking about rafts of referendums in the next number of years, we get on with governing this country under the present Constitution. The present Constitution is preventing us from doing nothing at the moment that we want to do. There is no provision in the present Constitution, perhaps with the exception of the eighth amendment, which we are dealing with, that is impeding the proper governance of this country. All of this projecting on to the Constitution wish lists of socially desirably things is fundamentally mistaken. To give to the Judiciary any function whatsoever in determining the allocation of resources between housing and health is probably one of the most stupid ideas that has ever been canvassed by anybody. The Judiciary is not suited to make those decisions. The members of the Judiciary are incapable of making those decisions. The allocation of resources is the political process and it remains in Leinster House for that function to be carried out. Let us stop all this game playing with the Constitution. Let us get on with governing the State.