Electioneering with Children's Rights

[Miriam Cotton]

Beware of Fianna Fail tampering with the constitution

When the leader of a political party with a track record on social policy like Fianna Fail’s starts talking about children’s rights, it’s time to sit up and be alarmed – particularly so when it is in the vicinity of a general election. Fianna Fail are a party who have perfected the art of claiming to do one thing while in fact doing its opposite. The issue of child protection should not be used as a back door through which further reductions in the rights of parents to secure adequate state services for their children is introduced.
For some time now, Fianna Fail and the PDs have been chafing under the yoke of the rights conferred on the people of Ireland under the terms of the constitution and especially at the corresponding financial and other obligations that it places on them to provide services for ordinary people. As compared, say, to the rights of foreign corporations to raid our natural resources with extraordinarily favourable tax incentives funded out of the electorate’s purse, the rights of children are not even in the same galaxy where current policy making is concerned. There are urgent questions to be answered. Will it only be parents and private individuals who will be in the firing line when they fail or abuse the children in their care? Bear in mind that child abuse is already illegal in Ireland – no change to the constitution is necessary to establish that fact. So what is really at issue here? If the government is truly willing to make itself, its agents and all public and private institutions fully accountable for their own failures then progress will definitely be made because it is within private and state-run institutions that the worst of the systematic abuses of children (and others) have occurred.

However, in the absence of any meaningful investment in services for children and the abject failure of the government’s National Children’s Strategy for the same reason, the constitution has been increasingly relied on by parents and families as the legal basis for mounting challenges to the government’s frequent and deliberate disregard for the provision of services to its own electorate. Should we be worried, then, to find Fianna Fail looking to the idea of changing the constitution in favour of an increase in state power at the expense of parents and families while dressing it up in talk of rights for children? There is justification for this suspicion – notably the introduction of the Education of Persons with Special Needs Act 2004 and the Disability Act 2005 which were trumpeted in advance by Fianna Fail as major pieces of rights legislation. Since their introduction, we have seen reductions in front line services to children around the country because under the terms of this legislation, the rights of children have been devastatingly reduced to the rights of a single government Minister to allocate resources as he personally sees fit, depending on his ideological preferences. The constitutional rights of parents to defend their children against unconstitutional state neglect have actually been taken away and the established case law which offered some protection has also, not coincidentally, been weakened. Can Fianna Fail really be taken seriously where children’s rights are concerned? So far, Sinn Fein are the only political party to promise to repeal this backward and discriminatory legislation, if they form a part of the next government. If Ian Paisely can work with Sinn Fein so can we here in the South, surely?

If Fianna Fail are serious about children’s rights they will be able to show a guaranteed investment plan for improvements in desperately needed services for Irish children. Does every child have appropriate developmental, health and educational supports as defined by their actual needs? Is the state going to invest in adequate play, recreational and open air facilities for them? What protection will it offer them against industrial and other forms of pollution to which children are particularly vulnerable? Will property and industrial developers be obliged to consider environmental effects on children and to amend or drop plans where their health would be put at risk? Will the shabby state of so many Irish schools be improved? If we don’t have a resounding yes in answer to these and other questions then we can be pretty sure that this initiative, as it relates to Fianna Fail, is simply emotive manipulation of the media and the electorate around an imprecise principle without there being any obligation on the government to do anything truly meaningful for Irish children.

[commentator]

Miriam at a rough calculation your programme costs about 20 billion per annum? Rough guess you understand given your concern for expendityure suiting actual needs of every child of every feckless slut and semen spreader in ireland unable or unwilling to provide for their kids

How do we fund it?

[Corcaigh33]

Is it purely the potential timing of this referendum which means that Fianna Fáil cannot be trusted on this issue? Should the present government, for however long it is left in office, not enact any legislation or take any action which could be seen as being used for electoral benefit?

It is clear from the post that you are pre-disposed to an anti-Fianna Fáil position.

I don't think the impending referendum should be used as a political football before the next election and I believe that should the government use it as such - they will most definitely lose on all fronts.

I would much prefer a Dáil consensus on the wording of the referendum with the full support of all the major parties (you'd never know what Joe Higgins might come out with) so that the country would be left with a simple choice come referendum day.

Your post pre-supposes that your wish-list for children's rights and entitlements is NOT what Fianna Fáil want and while I am not au fait with Fianna Fáil policy enough to state otherwise - it strikes me that most if not all political parties have at their core the kind of values which you want to see advocated and acted upon.

Basically my point would be that in the same way as you are warning people of the merits and agenda of Fianna Fáil's motives I would say let's have the debate, let's see what exactly is being proposed, let's have all the parties contributions and let the electorate make their mind up on election day as to whether or not Fianna Fáil are simply emotively manipulating the media.

[Miriam Cotton]

I make no bones that I intensely dislike the Fianna Fail party and all that it stands for. It is a normal response to being treated with utter contempt by them on just about every level at which I have to engage with public administration as a parent of children with disability - and in many other respects as well.

Commetators above do not factor into their economic caluclations the expense to the exchequer in the failed lives of children raised in significant disadvantage. To take just one statistic, 80% of people with Down Syndrome are dependent on others to get by when it has been shown by Down Syndrome Ireland that the figures should be the other way around. With appropriate interventions at an early stage in their lives 80% could be fully independent tax payers. The cost of this neglect to the state is enormous. And that's just one group. If you consider the costs to the state of all needlessly dependent people with disability - and other difficulties - it is well in excess of 20 billion per year.

The underlying assumption in the arguments above is that people are worthless unless they are net hard cash contributors. Against this terror of investing properly in our best resource, people, the lack of comparable concern at the squandering of 10 billion euro in overspending on road building alone (the most expensive in Europe for no obvious reason whatsoever), is striking. And when you consider that the government is actually unable to tell us exactly where that money went (perhaps there are lots of other people out there with no bank accounts) it begins to put this tired objection to funding rights for people into perspective. Not to mention what might have been done with revenues from gas and oil finds off our coast - and all the other unbelievably wasteful government projects that have run over budget through incompetence and mismanagement. Tony O Reilly alone has netted himself something like 2 billion euro fom the sale of his licence in the Dun Quin field to Exxon Mobil - plus he retains a 16% share in the field. That is capitalism at its most obscene - for one person to benefit from finite world resources to that extent. The money is there alright, we just need a government with the nous and the competence to deliver a programme of public administration which is not wholly dictated to them by PDs/IBEC and foreign investors. Encouraging business is one thing. Making it the sole basis for social and economic policy is next to fascism - and ultimately counterproductive. Come the revolution...

This is a debate that certainly needs to be had, agreed. The fact is that Fianna Fail have already clearly proven themselves to be ideologically opposed to the idea of rights for children. They are not tinkering with the constitution for any reason other than to diminish the rights of parents to challenge their neglect on the basis of Articles 40, 41 and 42. That shaft of light is to be plugged for the annoyance it has caused them from cheeky members of the electorate who dare to think that they ought to be made to do their jobs properly.

[Coles]

Good post... Interesting stuff.

[Miriam Cotton]

Not for nothing did Haughey call Ahern the most devious, cunning and skillful of them all. The strategy appears to be this: there are irritating people who keep getting in the way of the corporate agenda. This time, it is parents who rely on the terms of the constitution for legal redress in order to procure services for their children. This has to be stopped but it's a tricky one - and likely to stir up ferocious, widespread opposition - being an emotive issue. So, you sit down and work out who your fiercest enemies are and you take your proposals directly to them, disguised as something they are bound to embrace - e.g. preventing child sexual abuse. Everybody will sign up to that, of course - child protection is an issue which appears to bring out the unthinking Stalin in everyone - a fact most especially worked into Ahern's caluclations on this one.

Here is a fawning and obedient little op/ed from the Irish World:

"Proposing “strong and effective” provisions against maltreating, neglecting or abusing children, the Taoiseach told delegates: “We should be second to none in giving effect to our commitment to truly value childhood. “That is why I believe we should have a constitutional referendum to put the rights of children in a central place in our constitution.

“In that way, the Irish people can show the value we attach — in the words of the 1916 proclamation of Irish independence — to cherishing all the children of the nation equally.”

He said he had instructed health and children’s minister Brian Lenihan to begin consultation and discussions with other political parties and interested groups in the coming weeks to get a consensus on the amendment’s wording.

Last month Pope Benedict told Irish bishops in Rome that they should establish the truth about child sex abuse by priests there to prevent a repeat and rebuild trust and confidence with the public."

But child abuse is and was illegal. The problem was that the church and political establishments suppressed and hid it - they refused to bring people to account for it - to use the terms of the constitution and all the legislation that we already had. We do not need an amendment to the consitution to protect children against abuse - we need only for people to do their jobs properly according to existing law. We need an end to cover-ups and evasions. Instead we are seeing proposals for criminalising whistleblowers. In respect of true rights for children, Ahern's proposal (carefully identified with himself personally, of course, to impart that special warm glow of caring paternalism ) is woefully inadequate. It will be interesting to see whether these 'strong' and 'effective' provisions that he is calling for will include full accountability for e.g. professional failures and neglect of children among social workers, doctors, teachers, care home managers, hospitals etc etc.

It is bizarre that Fergus Finlay and others should overlook the fact that it is the state itself which has been the worst abuser of children. Fianna Fail have the most extraordinarily patronising and condescending attitude towards parents and their children. This ammendment will serve no purpose other than to further infantilise us all and enshrine a child status on adult men and women along with their children within the constitution itself. Successive governments have consistently failed children - none more so than the current one. Pointing the finger of blame exclusively at the tiny minority of child abusers among the electorate - as this proposed amendment effectively does - is dissembling to the point of insulting dishonesty. For the vast majority of loving and trustworthy parents it is certainly not worth a dimiution of their rights on the back of a rationale that is already well served under existing law. In short, the whole charade is electioneering of the most manipulative kind.

See Finlay's Irish Examiner article here:

http://www.irishexaminer.com/irishexami ... y....1.asp

[Corcaigh33]

Again I would suggest the fact that :

1. Fergus Finlay - obviously not an FF supporter - according to you has overlooked state institutional abuse

and that

2. according to you successive governments have consistently failed children

hardly means that Fianna Fáil are at the root of all evil with respect to children.

I am curious how you seem to know what the wording of the referendum will be and that it is going to infantalise parents and restrict them from claiming rights for their children.

I have a different issue with the potential wording of the referendum i.e. that it should put the rights of the child in such a position where it is to the detriment of the rights, responsibilities and control of their parents. In my opinion, parents are responsible for their children and anything that diminishes their role or authority in that regard would be very wrong. Maybe this is what you are worried about too.

I have no clue as to your personal circumstances and would not dream of presuming to "understand you or empathise with you". This isn't my intention. It is clear you feel the state and its institutions have failed you and your children. I don't have any (yet).

I suppose it is reasonable to blame the current encumbents for the inefficacy of the state with respect to children but I suspect the situation across the state service sector would not be much better with a different government.

[Miriam Cotton]

We dont have the proposed wording of the referendum but if you add up what Ahern has said on the subject it is clear that the rights he refers to are of the state to intervene in parental authority of their children's lives. Real rights for children would cost money, you see, and children are not worth that much to Fianna Fail.

Finlay makes it clear that he has been working with Fianna Fail on the wording and he explains that he does not think families are a 'moral institution' - in other words the inalienable rights of the family as they are defined under our constitution are the stated target of this ammendment. The state, Finlay says, is the more appropriate legal entity for this power and parents should be happy to give it over, unequal to the authority as he implies we all are. I don't care about the rights of child abusers in respect of their actual abuse of children but why should the vast majority of innocent and responsible adults surrender their status under the constitution because of these abusers who can be dealt with perfectly adequately under existing law? It's monstrous. Changing the constition will not make it easier to identify who is or is not an abuser, for crying out loud! There is an arrogant and patronising assumption that parents are less responsible and capable than state agents.

Finlay gives us another big clue when he speaks of applying the principle that the 'interests of the child are paramount'. This comes straight from social work theory. Of course Barnardos in the UK (where there is no constitution) is a social work riddled organisation, steeped in all the jargon and theory of that bizarre profession. The same probably applies to Barnardos in Ireland. Parents and indeed other professionals have always been a major obstacle to overcome and social workers in the UK (where Finlay's parent organisation is based) have worked long and hard to annihilate the natural and legal authority of parents - so as to be able to insert themselves into private situations without resistance from people who frequently and justifiably resent their intrusion. This has resulted in some appalling abuses of parental rights and indeed of the rights of the very children that social workers claim to be protecting.

To say that the interests of the child are paramount is absurd in any case. The interests of parents and children are not mutually exclusive as the statement implies - they are inextricably bound up in each other. By the strategy of appearing to put children's interests ahead of their parents, social workers effectively separate them from one another and then put themselves neatly into the divide where they have absolute control over the familial relationship. It's bonkers - like something out of Orwell.

Social workers already have draconian and horrendous powers to intervene and even remove children from their homes where they only suspect that abuse may be taking place. They frequently get it wrong and many of them use that power very inappropriately. At the same time, they frequently fail to protect many children where they have been given repeated notice of actual abuse taking place. The last thing that Ireland needs is an army of beefed up social enforcers of this variety. It is a safe bet that it is not Bertie Ahern's intention to make the social work or any other profession accountable for their not infrequent neglect and mistakes.

Fianna Fail never, ever, come down in favour of any other solution other than setting up additional layers of bureacracy and quangos, when the money would be much better directed to front line services such as improved play and social facilities for children and a host of other direct provisions which would make a real impact ont he lives of those who need it most. The point of these bureacracies is take power from parents and supportive professionals and put it in the hands of government appointed administrators, while carefully drawing in the pursestrings.

Here is how Inclusion Ireland put it in respect of the disability legislation when it was first published:

"The Bill will create a new administrative structure on top of a system that has been heavily criticised for being administratively top heavy. Where will the resources come for all the new officers required by the health boards and those covered by other departments as outlined in Sectoral plans? Will the resources for this level of infrastructure be taken from the resources allocated to provide direct services and to create new therapy posts? "

And

"The position of the assessment officer is crucial. These officers must be persons of the highest calibre with experience of people with disabilities and their families yet there is no indication of the type of person or persons who may be appointed as assessment officers."

These fears have proved to be fully justified where the where the Education of Persons with Special Needs (EPSEN) Act is concerned. The National Council for Special Education was set up, at great expense. Approximately 90 Special Education Needs Officers were appointed, at great expense, none of whom are required to have relevant SEN qualifications. Despite this, they are now doing the work which qualified psychologists used to do before - i.,e. assessing the educational needs of intellectually disabled children - often without any experience whatsoever of the conditions those children are suffering from.

At the same time, allocations of resource teaching hours and special needs assistants all over the country have gone down. Assessment delays have worsened. And a load of extra money is being spent on achieving that outcome!

Meanwhile foreign corporates can have as much of our taxes as they like - its name your price time for Exxon, Shell, Indaver and any other shark that cares to have a slice of the Irish pie. We actually pay them to make a profit out of our resources and/or to pollute our country.

[lostexpectation]

these referendums are ridiclous is this going to be yes no question I mean who eactly is going to vote no, to increase childrens rights. So the pople voting for it will have no say on the detials of it, and in anyway I thought this was been pressured on us rightly by the EU, so what happens if people vote no?

I mean with divorce and abortion it was mostly a yes no wasn' it about 3 question re abortion?

[lostexpectation]

to answer my own question


THE referendum on children's rights next year could involve two questions being put to the people with just one answer required, a Government minister said yesterday, writes Senan Molony.
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/ ... e_id=14911