Leave the Constitution alone and legislate

WHILE the thorny question of abortion is stuck in the Citizens’ Assembly, the other great issue of the 1980s and 1990s – divorce – has returned to the political agenda.

Another of Fine Gael’s impressive firsttime TDs Josepha Madigan has been busy trying to reduce the constitutional waiting time for divorce from four years to two.

This week the Bill drafted and presented by the Dublin Rathdown TD and family law solicitor received cross-party support and is now to be assessed by the Oireachtas justice committee. If the bill is ultimately passed, a referendum would then have to be held to place the two-year restriction into the Constitution. There will then have to be a campaign and all the other costs involved in a referendum. This is madness.

A far better approach would be to simply delete the constitutional provision requiring a four-year wait and simply regulate by statute. For too long, the fall-back position for numerous politicians has been to put things into the Constitution rather than legislate for them. This is why we have the eighth amendment. The same thought process is behind the Taoiseach’s proposal to hold a referendum on votes for emigrants in presidential elections. The Government could simply legislate for it. Of course, the suspicion remains that this proposal was announced in the US to give Kenny kudos in addressing the emigrant issue with Donald Trump. Perhaps we should leave the Constitution alone and get our legislators to legislate. Isn’t that why we elected them?