The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, spoke enthusiastically at the National Library on Wednesday evening of the work facing the new Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution which has just been set up under the chairmanship of Brian Lenihan, TD. His audience comprised the ruling elite: Dail deputies, senators, Opposition leader John Bruton, very senior civil servants, a dozen High Court judges, officers of the Oireachtas, the Attorney General, David Byrne, and even the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Connell. Yet he never mentioned the word everyone was waiting for - abortion.
The committee will have to deal with the subject sooner or later, after the Green Paper and other consultations, but no one wanted to anticipate the immense problems it will create. Ironically the new committee, which faces the greatest task of all, is one of the few where the chairman does not get paid, because it is not a committee of the House. Under the new regulations the chairmen of 15 committees will receive either £10,874 or £7,213 a year, so there is considerable competition for nominations from the party leaders. The new FF/PD Government has reduced the number of committees but upped the remuneration.
As the great and the good admired the new committee and wondered when it would be forced to grasp the nettle, the Archbishop chatted to former Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald and others. Time was, it was murmured, when Dr Connell would have been writing the Constitution. Others, tongue-in-cheek, wondered if it wouldn't be a far better thing if he and the Taoiseach went off into a corner and settled it all between them without bothering with these new-fangled committees?