"No" supporters of the Children's Referendum

Hotblack Desiato

lmaopml wrote: »

The State would be 'accountable' if they sought legislation based on our current Constitution in the first place - but they haven't done so...they could have yesterday, they could today, they could tomorrow, but they aren't.

They could seek to have a child's voice heard, they could seek to have a child adopted if the circumstances are drastic - but they haven't done so through the ordinary legislative system which is only 'derived' from our Constitution - no need to re-word it!

They didn't do so, and they don't deserve us to reword our Constitution that allows ALL of those things to take place through the ordinary system - which has always been an option without a need for a referendum in the first place.

The current wording allows for all of these things...:) Why change it? Seriously why change it?

This referendum is a 'sales' pitch, and one that seeks to separate accountability from any terrible things that have happened here, and also happened all over the world, and sell the idea that 'the hands of the State were tied', but by voting 'Yes' we can 'untie' them - afterall it was impossible to DO, anything prior to this referendum.

The referendum is unnecessary. They could pursue any kind of childrens rights right now under the current constitution, but apparently it's not worthwhile doing without a clap on the back and some ambiguous re-wording - Nice!

As it stands, the constitution has strong protections for 'the family' and 'the institution of marriage' and taking both of these together, the courts have decided that the only family recognised by the constitution is a marital family. This requires a constitutional amendment to change

Marital children cannot be adopted voluntarily. They cannot be adopted involuntarily unless the court is convinced that the child has been totally abandoned by its parents and this will continue until age 18. This is an almost impossibly high bar. This requires a constitutional amendment to change

The above doesn't apply to children whose parents aren't married. We were supposed to have abolished the concept of illegitmacy 30 years ago, we abolished it from our laws but not our constitution. Children should not be treated differently because of the marital status of their parents. This requires a constitutional amendment to change

The voice of children being heard, and that the interests of the child should be paramount, need to be put in our constitution. As it stands, the rights of the family (a married family) are paramount not what's best for the child. This requires a constitutional amendment to change

The amendment also has explicit statements of the rights of children, which some people think are unnecessary, perhaps they are. But making them explicit cannot be a bad thing.

Min

Vote yes if you trust the state and if you believe words will change things, like will it stop children dying in state care, when current wording in the constitution says the state is obliged to take action when children need help.

This just gives the state more control when it not able to follow current wording in the constitution and it won't stop children dying in state care.
When the country was awash with money, nothing was done, even less resources now, this is just the state wanting to look like it cares given all the children who die in state care.

There are parts of the wording that are good, but why allow the nanny state to be the nanny when it is unable to look after all the children currently in it's care, with or without this legislation children will continue to die in state care in unnatural circumstances.

Min

Precious flower wrote: »

I was thinking that myself that the State would be more accountable if the children's referendum went through. It's amazing how backward this country has been when it came to the rights of the most vulnerable children in our country.

When is the state really held to account?

They can waste taxpayers money on a biased leaflet campaign, and then waste it on many other things but no one will be held to account.

The state has paid million over the state's involvement in sending children to the religious institutions where abuse happened, the state was also the inspectors of these places and yet they have turned it into the religious institutions being the ones they nearly always blame over that, nothing about state policy which was the vehicle that put them into these places.

The abuse in the church, there are reports where gardai and people in the state health sector knew about the abuse and did nothing.

Anyone who wants to put their trust in the state is blinding themselves to what the state allows and how in reality the state has made itself unaccountable, it is blame everyone else and if the state does take blame it was the fault of others in their reality, rather than a shared responsibilty.

hatrickpatrick

It's the usual problem of having a mixed bag. I absolutely agree with abolishing archaic definitions of family, marriage etc and giving children the right to be heard in court, but I don't agree with giving the state further powers of intervention. The last time the state had such power over children, they colluded in handing them over the industrial schools and magdalene laundries where they were tortured and hidden away for decades, and looking at the shower we have in office today, do you honestly trust them not to screw it all up again?

Who to trust?

**PRESS STATEMENT**
Monday 1 February 2010
Response to HSE statement that no missing child from HSE care has been trafficked

By Jillian van Turnhout, Children’s Rights Alliance

Responding to an article in today’s edition of The Irish Times (‘500 children seeking asylum went missing from care in decade’), the Children’s Rights Alliance would like to refute the reported statement from a HSE spokesperson that ‘it has been unsubstantiated that any of the children who go missing from HSE care have been trafficked’. Unfortunately, it is a matter of public record that children, who have disappeared from HSE care, have subsequently been ‘found’ in situations where they were being exploited by traffickers. It is vital that the HSE publicly acknowledges the reality of child trafficking in Ireland, so that they can address this serious violation of children’s rights.

The Alliance has collated a list of over 25 cases of confirmed child trafficking for the purposes of sexual or labour exploitation, including forced marriage (compiled using media reports and information provided by non-governmental organisations). The clandestine nature of the crime, in addition to child protection issues, means that it is likely that there have been significantly more cases of child trafficking than has been identified and put into the public domain.

In five of these cases, listed below, children have gone missing from HSE care and been exploited by child traffickers.

A 17-year-old Nigerian girl was placed into the care of the HSE after arriving in Ireland unaccompanied. She ran away shortly after being placed in care and six months later was found working in the sex industry in Sligo. Gardaí found the girl after they raided premises in Sligo Town, which they suspected was a brothel run by foreign nationals. The previous year, a 17-year-old African girl was found to be working as a prostitute in Sligo Town. The Gardai subsequently discovered that this African child was trafficked into Ireland by an organised prostitution ring.
An underage female from Nigeria was found by Gardaí in a brothel in Kilkenny and was identified as a suspected victim of trafficking. She was taken into HSE care. She was charged at Carlow District Court with failing to produce identity papers. Her case was originally heard in early July 2008 and she was remanded on continuing bail to appear again on 9 September 2008. She was placed in HSE care but failed to show up for her court appearance and was reported missing. Her whereabouts are unknown.
A 16-year-old female from Nigeria who arrived as a separated child was enticed out of a HSE residential care for separated children by a man who later got her involved in prostitution.
A 10-year-old Romanian Roma girl was taken into State care by the Gardaí under an Emergency Care Order. She went missing from her Dublin HSE care placement less than a week later. The 10-year-old was suspected to have been subject to an arranged marriage to an 18-year-old. The teenager concerned was also missing.
A 16-year-old female from Liberia was living in a HSE hostel for separated children in Dublin in 2003. She was reportedly picked up from her HSE Dublin care placement by traffickers and transported to Cork. In Cork, she was put on a plane destined for abroad. Her journey was intercepted by the Irish authorities and she was placed in a Limerick prison.
Child trafficking is an illegal criminal activity. It is a gross exploitation of children that breaches their fundamental human rights and may involve rape of a child, slavery, forced labour and psychological abuse. Separated children in the care of the HSE are at high risk of being exploited by traffickers. The Alliance believes that the HSE has breached its statutory duty towards these children by providing them with substandard care in hostels. The inadequate quality of hostel care and accommodation has been directly linked to instances of vulnerable children going missing and being trafficked for exploitation. Furthermore, the HSE does not have a plan to provide a child identified as a suspected victim of trafficking with adequate care and accommodation to meet their need for safety and security.
The Alliance welcomes the commitment in the Ryan Report Implementation Plan to provide equity of care to separated children, by ending the use of hostels. The Alliance will be monitoring the HSE closely over the coming year to ensure that it fulfills its equity of care policy fully.

Jillian van Turnhout
Chief Executive

Notes to Editor:

1.The above statement can be used verbatim.

Case-study 1: Cited by ECPAT in Progress Report – Ireland “Teen missing from care working as a prostitute”. Irish Independent. 1 April 2007. http://www.independent.ie/nationalnews/teen-missing-from-care-working-as...
Case-study 2: ‘Gardaí believe teenage girl was trafficked’, Ruadhan Mac Cormaic, The Irish Times, 09.07.08 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/0709/1215537641783.html; ‘Nigerian girl trafficked for sex trade goes missing from HSE’, Dara De Faoite and Ruadhán Mac Cormaic, The Irish Times, 10.09.08. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2008/0910/1220919678635.html
Case-study 3: Immigrant Council of Ireland (2009) Globalisation, Sex Trafficking and Prostitution: The Experiences of Migrant Women in Ireland, p.66;
Case-study 4: Nuala Haughey, The Irish Times, 05.04.03 ‘Gardaí remove girl (10) in inquiry into suspected arranged marriage’;
Case-study 5: Communication from refugee support group to the Children’s Rights Alliance 24.04.09.
2. Over the past number of years, the Alliance has consistently raised at ministerial level our serious concerns about the level of care and accommodation being provided to separated children and the alarmingly high number of children going missing. It has also campaigned for reform in coalition with other NGOs through ‘Action for Separated Children in Ireland’

3. Separated children are defined as children under 18 years of age who are outside their country of origin and separated from both parents or from their previous legal/customary primary caregiver. (Source: Separated Children in Europe’s Programme (2004) Statement of Good Practice, p. 2.).



Creator: Children's Rights Alliance


From this website; http://www.childrensrights.ie/resources/response-hse-statement-no-missing-child-hse-care-has-been-trafficked



My point; Giving the State more power or making them more accountable is a good thing.... Or at least it SHOULD be a good thing. Truth of the matter is, there are still a lot of issues that lie beneath the nice ideal this 'referendum' represents. Do we all want to protect children? Of course! There can be no dispute about that. Children are our greatest treasures in Ireland and hearing about the amount of abuse is both painful and disturbing to many of us on a great many levels. However, is this referendum the way to go about it? The HSE is not only lacking in its treatment of children under care, it has also proven to be lacking in it's care of the elderly.

From my own understanding of this amendment, a great many more children will be put under HSE care should a YES vote prevail....

Given the great many numbers of children that have died and gone missing already under HSE care, i truly fear for our nations youth. With so many children under care and so few family's willing to adopt (never mind legible) things can only get worse. Just take a look at the Social Welfare Office as an example. With so many more people on unemployment benefit the Office efficiency has greatly reduced leaving many people missing payments or having to resubmit documentation that has gone missing.

I do believe that children should have greater care provided for them by the state (coming from a rather unhappy childhood myself, I would have appreciated it), but I do not want to rush this decision without finding all the fine details, every possible factor must be accounted for starting with the foundations in Child Care Facilities. This cannot be achieved by an 'Easy Fix' like this referendum. We need more time to sort out the kinks.

Carlos Orange

AngryLips wrote: »

Could the results of this referendum turn out to be the one that is most overwhelmingly in favour of the yes side in the history of the state?

As it turns out it was one of the least supported amendments to pass.
3 amendments got >90% yes votes. 58% is nothing to write home about.

gizmo555

psinno wrote: »

As it turns out it was one of the least supported amendments to pass.
3 amendments got >90% yes votes. 58% is nothing to write home about.

Especially when you consider that three weeks ago the Irish Times published a poll giving the Yes/No support at 95% to 5%, if "Don't Knows" were excluded.

I voted no and while I respect the outcome, I hope the 42% no vote in the face of a very strongly funded private Yes campaign, an illegal and unconstitutional €1.1m Yes campaign by the government, and unanimous Yes support from all the political parties, gives the powers that be pause for thought.

Certainly 42% cannot be dismissed a lunatic fringe of Dana supporters . . .

Hotblack Desiato

Give the government pause for thought?

It would if there was a coherent message from the No side. There isn't.

Some advocated a No vote because they believed the amendment didn't go far enough.

Some fathers' rights groups advocated a No vote, mistakenly in my opinion as I believe the explicit recognition of the child's best interests and opinion will strengthen the position of separated fathers who want more involvement in their childrens' lives.

The weirdest reason given to vote No was from Two Rights Now, a group who want a lot more secularism in education (I'd like that too). Voting Yes or No to this amendment did not affect this issue at all.

There were the usual 'family rights' groups who hold far-right Catholic views and believe that parents (non-gay white Irish churchgoing Catholic parents, anyway) should basically be given complete authority over their children. Some of these people and groups were involved with the appalling Roscommon abuse case and opposed the HSE in taking those unfortunate children into care.

There was John Waters with his usual illogical contrarian-at-all-costs ranting, saying foster parents are in it for the money, how sickening.

There was Dana who has never found a government proposal on anything she didn't want to vote No to. At least Sinn Fein decided not to take an opportunist No position, for once.

There were others too with frankly odd arguments.

There was a 'the State can't be trusted' argument which makes no sense at all. In cases of parental abuse the only hope for the children concerned is state intervention.

There was the anti-austerity argument, makes no sense at all. It's likely that in future the courts will force the government to provide better for children at risk due to this amendment.

There were the frankly loony 'forced vaccination' and 'forced adoption' arguments. No point wasting electrons contradicting rubbish like that.

There were some who were annoyed at the Supreme Court's finding and who might have voted Yes if there'd been no government campaign at all. Again voting no simply because of that makes no sense at all. If you don't agree with information that is being presented, simply ignore it.

There's no coherent message at all coming from the No side, so no 'message'.

Yet again we've had a referendum 'debate' which was mostly about things we weren't voting on. Referendums really suck as a means of making important decisions.

Manach

And on the yes side we had the State with its ever so brilliant understanding of how Supreme court judgments and how they related to the constitution.

lmaopml

=ninja900;81675651]As it stands, the constitution has strong protections for 'the family' and 'the institution of marriage' and taking both of these together, the courts have decided that the only family recognised by the constitution is a marital family. This requires a constitutional amendment to change

No it didn't.

Marital children cannot be adopted voluntarily. They cannot be adopted involuntarily unless the court is convinced that the child has been totally abandoned by its parents and this will continue until age 18. This is an almost impossibly high bar. This requires a constitutional amendment to change

So are we to assume that the State can decide when a child is abandoned and the bar is where exactly? Is it lowered? Is it at some medium level? Or will it just go through the courts as usual? Where it ends up is your guess as much as mine.

The above doesn't apply to children whose parents aren't married. We were supposed to have abolished the concept of illegitmacy 30 years ago, we abolished it from our laws but not our constitution. Children should not be treated differently because of the marital status of their parents. This requires a constitutional amendment to change

No it doesn't. It requires the State to pursue it in the normal way through legislation! The Constitution never blocked any such thing.

The voice of children being heard, and that the interests of the child should be paramount, need to be put in our constitution. As it stands, the rights of the family (a married family) are paramount not what's best for the child. This requires a constitutional amendment to change

No it didn't.

The amendment also has explicit statements of the rights of children, which some people think are unnecessary, perhaps they are. But making them explicit cannot be a bad thing.

No but having a 'Cheesy' useless referendum, rather than get up off the ass is.

Anyways, it passed. It was always going to.

Hotblack Desiato

lmaopml wrote: »

No it didn't.

Contradiction isn't an argument.
Please explain your reasoning.
The courts have interpreted the references to 'the family' and the references to 'protection of the institution of marriage', taken together, as providing specific protections to families but only families based on marriage.

So are we to assume that the State can decide when a child is abandoned and the bar is where exactly?

Yes. Who else is going to protect kids at risk? Abusive or neglectful parents aren't. The churches aren't.

Is it lowered? Is it at some medium level? Or will it just go through the courts as usual? Where it ends up is your guess as much as mine.

It's not. Read the thread.
It's up to a judge to decide, but placing the interests of the child front and foremost, and taking their views into account as appropriate, neither of which were required to be considered at all up until now.

No it doesn't. It requires the State to pursue it in the normal way through legislation! The Constitution never blocked any such thing.

This refers to illegitimacy, if you'd been reading the thread you'd know why what you are saying is incorrect.

No it didn't.

See above about the best interests of the child and the opinion of the child

No but having a 'Cheesy' useless referendum, rather than get up off the ass is.

Anyways, it passed. It was always going to.

Shame on the two-thirds of the electorate who couldn't be bothered to get up off their ass.
The referendum was far from useless, as others and myself have explained.