Tomorrow the country goes to the polls to vote on the proposed amendment to the Constitution. My personal opinion is that the stakes are not as high as either side is claiming. I 
believe the potential harm or good that Article 42A can do is limited.
I’m relieved the wording is not the same as the wording devised by the committee headed by Mary O’Rourke in 2010. It was much more radical than the proposed wording and would have transferred far too much power to the State.
With regard to Article 42A, I think the transfer of power is modest. I think the rights of the family are still protected by Article 41 and Article 42: 1-4 and these will keep the new amendment in check.
A seminar I attended in Trinity College on the amendment reassured me on this point, particularly the talk by Dr Oran Doyle who did not like the 2010 wording but felt the wording before us is limited in scope.
However, I admire the courage of Kathy Sinnott and John Waters in speaking out against the amendment. Clearly they sincerely believe it is going too far and will act against the interests of children and for their troubles are being pilloried as ‘extremists’.
Ireland is full of group think. Group think led us into our current economic disaster. People who are willing to challenge the consensus, to challenge group think deserve respect and a hearing as a general rule, not derision.
On the other hand the benefits of the amendment are being massively oversold. For example, it is being claimed that the present wording of the Constitution prevented the State protecting the children in the like of the Kilkenny incest case and the Roscommon case.
That is nonsense. The State already had the power it needed. It just didn’t use it.
In addition, it is being claimed that the amendment will make a big difference to the lives of the 2,000 children in long-term foster care because it will allow married parents to voluntarily place their children for adoption.
However, two-thirds of the children in long-term care are from unmarried families and very few of them are adopted in any given year despite the lack of constitutional impediment. So there is something else stopping them from being adopted. It’s not clear what that something is.
In fact, the amendment will probably make a difference to only a handful of children each year and so to claim it will make a difference to 2,000 children currently in long-term care is completely misleading.
The amendment enshrines a child’s right to be heard in proceedings concerning him or her (depending on age), and for a child’s best interests to be considered in certain circumstances.
But this is already permitted by statute law. Does it really need to be in the Constitution? Maybe at a symbolic level it does.
However, as I write in my column in The Irish Independent today, if the Government really wants to help children it needs to drastically improve our child protection system, and more importantly, promote and strengthen marriage.
Research shows that children are least likely to be abused (by far) when raised by their two married biological parents.
The fact that two-thirds of children in care are from unmarried families should alone raise the alarm. It’s not doing so. Why isn’t it?
If Frances Fitzgerald is truly pro-children then she must be pro-marriage as well.