At least one vote in Spring

Simon was right: Bertie wants a children’s rights referendum in the spring, which therefore might join a potential St. Andrews ratification on the ballot, although the latter process looks stalled at the first hurdle right now.

Anyway, Bertie has revealed his preference today, just ahead of the Ard Fheis. In fact, the timing of the announcement suggests that Bertie didn’t want to be accused of running around the Dail by announcing the referendum at a party event first, but anyway…

Mr Ahern said he wanted to see constitutional protection from maltreatment, neglect or abuse for children. He also wants a specific provision requiring that the welfare of the child should be the paramount consideration.

Not for the first time, he’s going to need a good lawyer, not least to sort out how the paramount right of the child will be balanced with the right to life of the unborn relative to that of the expecting mother (Article 40). The proposed referendum will thus have echoes both of the botched pro-life amendment and the statutory rape problems, but who can blame Bertie for feeling confident that he can dodge those land mines? It also opens up the question of election timing again, given that he’s unlikely to want to propose two trips to the polling station in the first six months of next year. Either he rolls the referendum into an election, or does he have something in mind for the last couple of months of this year?