David Quinn
If there is genuine public demand for something politicians will hear ordinary members of the public raise it, writes David Quinn
The Government continues to treat our Constitution as a plaything, something to be changed almost at will, rather than as a guarantee of fundamental rights that exist irrespective of the popular mood at any given time and that cannot be taken away.
The last Government set up a Constitutional Convention to examine various issues in the Constitution, the biggest and most high profile being the issue of marriage which we voted on last year.
The Convention also looked at issues like the constitutional reference to “a woman’s life within the home”, which is in fact a commitment to try and ensure that women are not forced to work outside the home due to economic necessity.
For the record, the Convention recommended that this policy aim be made gender-neutral rather than be eliminated completely.
In addition, it looked at the constitutional prohibition on the offence of blasphemy. Here, it recommended that it be replaced with “a general provision to include incitement to religious hatred; and the introduction of a new set of detailed legislative provisions to include incitement to religious hatred”.
Referenda
The new Programme for Government proposes that several referenda be held, one on the aforementioned reference to a “woman’s life in the home”, one on the blasphemy issue, another on giving the Office of the Ceann Comhairle constitutional standing, and yet another on Ireland’s participation in the Universal Patent Court.
Aside from the marriage referendum, since 2011, we have also seen a referendum on children’s rights (passed) and on giving more powers to Oireachtas Inquiries (defeated).
Now the new Government wants to set up a successor body to the Constitutional Convention, this one to be called the ‘Citizen’s Assembly’.
Aside from looking at the abortion issue, it will be asked to look at whether or not to have fixed term parliaments and on the manner in which referenda are held (for example, should several be held on the same day?).
Obviously the most controversial of the planned referenda is the proposed one on abortion. I say ‘proposed’ because Minister Pascal Donohoe has said: “There will be a referendum in relation to that matter in the coming years.”
It appears certain, therefore, that the Citizen’s Assembly will recommend an abortion referendum of some sort and the only thing for it to decide is whether to delete the protection the Constitution gives to unborn children completely, or to replace it with something less restrictive and more permissive than the present clause.
This makes the process less than open-ended; seeing as the possibility of not having a referendum appears to be excluded from the outset.
Representative
It must also be presumed that the assembly will not be truly representative of the general public. The last one was not. For example, almost twice as many people voted against same-sex marriage in last year’s referendum as voted against it in the Constitutional Convention.
The whole process of a Citizen’s Assembly is also very subject to being unduly influenced by certain opinions. For example, ‘neutral’ speakers who are not in fact neutral but lean liberal.
In addition, the very term ‘Citizen’s Assembly’ gives the process a dignity it does not deserve. The name presumes that the assembly is the result of a demand from the citizens of Ireland, when it fact it is a product of the Government.
There is no real demand from the public for the article dealing with women in the home to be removed from the Constitution. There is no demand to remove the blasphemy provision from the Constitution either.
Is there real, deep-seated public demand to remove the Eighth Amendment? The answer is, no. If there was, it would have been raised regularly at the doorsteps in the recent General Election and it wasn’t. By regularly, I mean as regularly as issues like the water charge.
Politicians
In addition, pro-choice politicians would have done much better than they did. I am not saying Labour did badly because of its support for legalised abortion, but it did not help them in any way.
In the closing stages of the campaign, Labour made a very big deal of the fact that if they were returned to office, they would insist on a referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment. If voters wanted the same thing as badly as pro-choice campaigners would have us believe, then why didn’t Labour do better than they did?
When there is genuine public demand for something politicians will hear ordinary members of the public raise it regularly in their clinics. The abortion issue is rarely mentioned in this way.
However, pro-abortion campaigners insist that even when a given politician is opposed to abortion, it is undemocratic of them to stand in the way of a referendum.
I find this extremely unconvincing given the lack of genuine public demand for one. It is all very well to wave opinion polls in the air showing support for repeal of the pro-life amendment, but opinion polls measure breadth, not depth of feeling.
For example, opinion polls in Britain have often showed majority support for the death penalty, but there is no real groundswell of support for its restoration because it is rarely raised with politicians in a spontaneous way by ordinary voters.
Opponents of the death penalty would, of course, say it is wrong in itself and therefore should not be put to the vote. The death penalty is very popular with many Americans but opponents would love if the US Supreme Court was one day to abolish the death penalty in all 50 states.
Brexit
It took years before the British Government agreed to have a referendum on British membership of the EU despite a big campaign in favour of such a referendum and despite polls showing that lots of Britons want to leave.
Successive British governments did not allow themselves to be pressured by the argument that ‘the democratic thing to do is to have a referendum’.
David Cameron only agreed to hold a referendum when he was under real electoral pressure, that is, when he saw that the Conservative party was losing votes to the UK Independence Party (UKIP). It also took big pressure from inside his own party.
So if I was a politician and I was told it’s ‘undemocratic’ to oppose the holding of an abortion referendum, I would give two responses. I would say that the right to life is so fundamental it should not be put to the vote at all, any more than the right to free speech should be put to the vote.
Second, there is no evidence of real public demand for a referendum. Until there is, until the likes of Fine Gael starts losing votes because it won’t hold a referendum, there should be no referendum.
Demand from the media and from pressure groups is not to be confused with genuine public demand.
