Just under two-thirds (62 per cent) of voters would back a children’s referendum according to a new poll [1] released 
by Saving Childhood [2] a coalition of children’s groups.. The poll also says 37 per cent of voters don’t know how they would vote in such a referendum. Only 29 percent are aware of the planned referendum.
The poll, conducted by Behavior and Attitudes, also found that 89 per cent of voters agree that the State should be able to intervene in families where children are “at risk”. However, under the Constitution the State can already intervene where parents “fail in their duty towards the child”.
When specific questions were put to participants:
· 92 per cent agreed that “children should have right to such protection and care as is necessary for their safety and welfare.”
· 89 per cent agree that “children’s rights should be clearly laid out in the Constitution.”
· 87 per cent agree that the State should “intervene in families with great care for the rights of both children and family.”
· 81 per cent agree that “children’s and parent’s rights should be balanced in the Constitution.”
However, last year a Red C poll carried out on behalf of the Iona Institute found that nearly three quarters (72 per cent) of voters felt that, “except in cases of abuse or neglect, parents should decide what is best for their children rather than an outside organisation, such as the State”.
In a press statement, the coalition, which includes Barnardos, the Children’s Rights Alliance and the Irish Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC), claimed that children whose parents are married are “discriminated against” and “placed at greater risk” under the Constitution as the state can only move in where there is “an immediate and fundamental threat” to the child.
Speaking to the Irish Examiner, solicitor Catherine Ghent said: “The test for intervention in a married family is there must be an immediate and fundamental threat to the capacity of the child to operate as a human person.
“There are exceptional circumstances in exceptional families, where children can be left in a very dangerous situation and the state’s ability to intervene is curtailed by the Constitution.”
The current constitutional situation can have a “very negative” impact on children, she said.
She said it was not an exaggeration “to say parents have tortured their children; they have been beaten so badly that they break limbs,” and that those children are being sent home to their abusers.”
However, other legal experts have cast doubt on the need for the proposed referendum.
Prominent senior counsel and constitutional expert Gerard Hogan has said that the suggestion that the current Constitution does provide adequate protection for children.
Professor Hogan has argued that suggestions that the current Constitutional arrangements are inadequate to protect children were based on “a grotesque misstatement and misunderstanding of the present Constitutional provision.”
He said he disagreed with the notion that the present provisions hadn’t worked well, or that they didn’t “strike the right balance, or are in some way responsible for lots of modern ills”.
He also questioned the introduction of the concept of the best interests of the child, asking “who is going to decide what is in the best of the child, and how is this going to be done?”
Addressing the issue in February soon after the Committee’s proposals were published, he said if you were “talking about the State vindicating the rights of the child, you have to remember that this is likely to be officialdom, or some judge making this decision.”
There are currently almost 6,000 children in care. Children can be removed from families, including from married parents, where children are abused or neglected.