Yesterday, writing in the Irish Independent, former Supreme Court judge Hugh O’Flaherty said that he didn’t think that the Government’s proposed referendum on children’s rights was necessary.

He said that the aims of the wording, such as making the welfare of children a paramount consideration, extending the right to adoption where child’s welfare requires, providing education, including free education at primary level and making sure the State’s laws and services match the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child were “laudable”.

But he asked: “[D]o we need a new referendum to deal with them? They are all — or nearly all — to be found in an existing article of the Constitution, in our ordinary legislation or in court judgments.”

You can read the whole article here.