A former Supreme Court judge has warned against protecting the rights of carers in the home in the constitution, claiming that it would be difficult to define and would also be contrary to the separation of powers.
Her intervention came as support groups said that the Government risked sending a message that it did not value the unpaid work of stay-at-home parents and carers if it did not create an amendment to replace article 41.2.
Catherine McGuinness said that calls to replace a constitutional reference to a woman’s place in the home with a new gender-neutral amendment could have unintended consequences and appeared to back the Government’s preferred path of simply repealing the clause and not replacing it with anything.
