Taoiseach Bertie Ahern this evening proposed the holding of a Constitutional referendum on the rights of children.
Addressing a special gathering of general election candidates and directors of elections on the eve of the Fianna Fáil ardfheis in Dublin's Citywest, Mr Ahern said he would be seeking cross-party consensus on the wording of an amendment to be put before the people.
He did not specify a date, but a general election is due before next summer and referendums have been held on the same day in the past.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern
Minister for Children Brian Lenihan is to enter consultation with Dáil parties and relevant groups in the coming weeks
In light of what he called Ireland's failure to protect children in the past, Mr Ahern said an amendment must constitutionally enshrine "robust safeguards for the rights and liberties of all the children of our nation".
He added: "An integral part of being a country which is willing to be forward-looking has to be a willingness to learn lessons from our history. This is one of the reasons why I have been willing to support efforts to fully examine deeply troubling issues which in some cases have been many decades old.
"It is not enough for us to look at a terrible picture of past abuse and deplore it - we have to be willing to understand its full lessons. And we must learn from these experiences by developing a new culture of recognition and protection of the rights of the child," Mr Ahern said.
The issue has been considered in different forums in recent years, and Mr Ahern said it "appears increasingly clear" that constitutional recognition of children's rights to protect them from "maltreatment, neglect or abuse" is needed.
"I believe that the fundamental law of our land, the Constitution, should fully reflect our commitment to valuing and protecting childhood.
"And we need to explicitly set out rights of the child in our Constitution."
He said the objective should be to have provisions for protecting children which are as strong and as effective as that possessed by any other country in the world. "We should be second to none in giving effect to our commitment to truly value childhood."