Brian Lenihan faces a tough grilling today, defending the Government's record on children's rights before a UN committee, writes Jillian van Turnhout.
T he minister for children Brian Lenihan will face six hours of questioning before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child today on Ireland's progress on children's rights.
Will the committee be impressed? How will his defence of the Irish Government's record be judged?
Eight years have passed since the Irish State faced its first examination by the UN committee. On that occasion, the government delegation was taken aback by the committee's vigorous and close questioning and by the extensive media coverage of the State's inadequate response to the rights of children.
The media described the delegation as "squirming" in the face of the committee's questioning and noted a comment by a committee member that the government's submission "lacked the sense of the children as people". So, have things improved since then?
In the months following the 1998 examination, the government made a number of significant commitments to children, and over the intervening years it has begun to address some of the key issues raised by the UN committee. A National Children's Strategy was published in 2000; an Ombudsman for Children was appointed in 2004; and the Office of the Minister for Children was established in 2005. There have also been much-needed improvements in services and legislative reform in a number of areas.
In June this year the Children's Rights Alliance, a coalition of 80 non-governmental organisations, presented an NGO perspective on Ireland's performance in its report, From Rhetoric to Rights, and in a subsequent meeting with the UN committee. While the alliance acknowledges the progress made, growing up in Ireland is still not a positive experience for far too many of our children.
The alliance believes that a key barrier is the lack of sufficiently strong protection of children's rights in the Irish Constitution. This is not an abstract issue: the constitutional status of children as subordinate to the rights of the family inhibits the State's ability to intervene in family life to protect children, as noted in the Kilkenny incest investigation report as far back as 1993.
As a result of the constitutional position, decisions by the Oireachtas, the courts and professionals in relation to children must be made on the basis of the constitutional rights of the family, regardless of whether those decisions are in the best interest of the child. This situation affects the lives of children in areas such as child welfare and protection, adoption, custody, consent to medical treatment and admission to psychiatric hospitals.
In 1998, the UN committee specifically recommended that the government amend the Constitution to provide greater protection for children, in line with the recommendations of the 1996 report of the review group on the Constitution. Nothing happened.
Ten years on, in January this year, the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution took the regressive step of recommending wording for a constitutional amendment that is wholly inadequate and significantly weaker than that proposed by the review group.
Childhood does not stand still while recommendations gather dust. A generation of children has grown up in the 13 years since the Kilkenny incest investigation flagged the need for reform. The time for talking is over: we need political leadership on this issue. The alliance calls on the Government to empower Mr Lenihan, when attending the UN hearing, to make an explicit commitment to instigate the process of constitutional reform so as to strengthen the protection afforded to children.
Brian Lenihan faces a difficult task. The UN committee may well want answers to questions such as: why, given our status as one of the wealthiest countries in the world, do official statistics still show pervasive deprivation, with one child in 10 living in poverty, one in 20 living in overcrowded or unsuitable accommodation, and one child in three from disadvantaged communities leaving primary school with serious literacy problems?
Why are children who have been abused forced to wait months for assessment, counselling and therapeutic services?
There are solutions to all these challenges - and these solutions are within the Government's grasp.
The committee will put the spotlight on the Government's record in relation to children's rights. The process may not be a comfortable one for the Government but it can, and should, represent a valuable opportunity for our leaders to show they are prepared to take the steps needed to make Ireland a country fit for all children.
Jillian van Turnhout is chief executive of the Children's Rights Alliance