Churches should come out and support the Government’s referendum on children’s rights, the Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, has said.

Speaking during the debate on the legislation to allow the referendum take place on November 10th, Mr Noonan said he would like “if the churches made a clear statement at an early date indicating that they favoured this referendum”.

He said that the Catholic Church as well as the other Christian churches had been silent on the issue thus far.

Earlier, Taoiseach Enda Kenny sought to reassure parents that the proposed amendment would not be “a charter for trespass into their family’s lives”.
 
He said: “The best place for children is within a loving and supportive home. The referendum does not seek to change that.”

Deputy Sinn Féin leader, Mary Lou McDonald, acknowledged that many people had “very real fears about this referendum”. Many voters, she said, had “experienced and seen at first-hand the failure of the State to protect our most vulnerable children”.

There had been various reports into these failures by the State, Deputy McDonald added.

“The result is that many people do not trust the State to protect our most vulnerable people and in particular, our children,” she said.

She said: “We must reassure parents that they will remain the primary carers, protectors and custodians of their children and that it is the State’s role to support them in that work.”

Other politicians have suggested before that religious involvement in political debate was not welcome.

In June 2010, then Minister for the Environment and Green Party leader John Gormley suggested that the opposition of the Catholic Church to the Government’s Civil Partnership Bill was a case of “church interference”.

He said he was “taken aback” by a statement made by the Catholic bishops opposing the Government proposal.

Mr Gormley said that when he read the bishops’ statement he was “taken aback”.

Speaking on RTÉ’s News At One, Mr Gormley said he “thought we had left the era of church interference behind us”.

The Church, Mr Gormley continued, “should concentrate its efforts on looking after the spiritual needs of its flock, and not intrude into temporal or State matters”.

RTÉ presenter Sean O’Rourke asked whether Mr Gormley’s statement was “a proper democratic attitude”. Mr Gormley responded by questioning “the sort of democracy and the sort of freedom of conscience that you have within the Church itself”.