The proposed children’s rights referendum, which will lower the threshold at which the State can intervene in the 
family to remove children will not give the State too much power, TDs have claimed.
Speaking during a Dáil debate on the report of the Joint Committee Constitutional Amendment on Children, a range of TDs from different parties said that the amendment would recognise that the primary and natural carers, educators and protectors of the welfare of a child are the child’s parents.
Fianna Fáil Deputy Mary O’Rourke, the chairwoman of the committee, said that they had been “concerned that parents would be assured that their rightful authority and pivotal role in relation to their children would not be undermined”.
She continued: “It is not intended that the role of parents would be lessened or diminished in any way.”
The continued existence of Article 41 concerning the family would provide this assurance, she insisted.
Deputy Alan Shatter of Fine Gael said that the amendment was “balanced”, and sought to ensure “that the rights of children are protected while at the same time recognising that the most important people in the lives of any child are the child’s parents, and the parents are the ones who have the primary duty to ensure children are properly cared for and looked after”.
The amendment, Deputy Shatter said, also sought to establish that where there was intervention by the State, that it be proportionate. and that it “avoid taking children into care where it can be avoided and to try to ensure that where matters are going wrong they are rectified within the family”.
Deputy Shatter added that recently publicised failures in the HSE’s child protection services showed there was much that could be done to drastically improve care for vulnerable children without a referendum on children’s rights.
Constitutional amendments were “not required to address the tragic difficulties of these young persons”.
He added that the current system of child protection was “grossly dysfunctional” and “uncoordinated”
Constitutional amendments, he said, were “not required to address the tragic difficulties of these young persons”.
The Minister of State for Children, Fianna Fáil TD Barry Andrews rejected suggestions that the proposed amendment would grant the State extra powers “enabling social workers to wade into a family and remove the child or children”.
Quoting Dr. Geoffrey Shannon, he said the wording made clear “that removal of the child from the family is a last resort and by providing for early intervention the likelihood of the child being taken into care is significantly reduced”.
The threshold for State intervention, he added would be “based on proportionality”,
Fine Gael Justice Spokesperson Charles Flanagan suggested that children’s rights campaigners had been “subject to a number of unsavoury accusations over the years”.
These consisted of the suggestion “that giving children rights would somehow damage the family or would not be in the best interests of families”.
He continued: “The theory appeared to be that children’s rights constituted a zero-sum game – the family had to lose if the children were to win.
“Until very recently we had not accepted the need to protect children in the manner in which it is now proposed. For example, social workers were traditionally painted as Orwellian figures intent on snatching children from the hands of loving families.
“They were figures to be feared and were viewed as people in society who were in some way distrusted.”