THE Irish Commission for Justice and Peace has called for social and economic rights to be spelt out in the Constitution.
The absence of such clauses serves to aggravate inequality, exclusion and poverty, it says, by denying the underprivileged the possibility of seeking constitutional redress.
The commission, which is a body of the Irish Bishops Conference, makes its case in a submission in response to an invitation from the all party Oireachtas Review Group on the Constitution.
The Constitution should embrace the right of the elderly to protection, the right to shelter and housing medical and social assistance for those without resources, the right to social insurance, freedom from hunger, the right to health, family protection and the right to protection of the environment, the commission argues.
In the light of changes in the national and international understanding of human rights, the body says, the absence of an expanded enumeration of social and economic rights from the Constitution is increasingly difficult to justify.
To omit fundamental socioeconomic rights from any revision of the Constitution would given them less protection than other categories of rights and convey a clear message that they are somehow secondary.