Charles Flanagan (Laois, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge what Deputy Clare Daly has said. The difficulty is the next question. The Deputy takes the view that there should be something in the Constitution and makes a very fair point in that regard but the difficulty arises when we ask what that might be.

On the matter of the Citizens' Assembly, it was felt that we should have an assembly on the issue of caring but that assembly may not come back with a constitutional provision. It may make recommendations to the Government or the Oireachtas of a totally different nature. I certainly would not like to pre-empt what it might do but I expect that its deliberations will be much broader and will not be merely framed in the context of the Constitution. I do not see the perceived contradiction in what I said in terms of simple deletion and the work of the Citizens' Assembly.

Caring is very complex and if clauses on caring are to be entered in our Constitution, that will require really careful consideration. Indeed, that informed the thinking of the Government on going through the various options in considerable detail. On the matter of the family, references to the family in the current Constitution are really limited and relate only to the marital family. They do not relate to wider family configurations. Many caring relationships between siblings, for example, would not be covered in any event. I want to impress on the committee that these issues were given the most detailed consideration. These are issues that go back to the early 1990s in terms of an approach that Government might take on what might be put to the people. After the legal advice, alongside the challenging deliberation on a form of substitute words, it was felt that we should proceed with simple deletion.