Tánaiste Michael Martin said he agreed with Electoral Commission chief Art O’Leary who maintained that a proper information campaign would take up to 16 weeks before the three general equality referendums.
Mr Martin described the matter as “complex”.
“I would agree with the chief executive of the Electoral Commission. I have always been consistently of the view that we do need a proper preparation time in advance of any referendum. The issues here are complex and there are a number of issues that are being considered by Government at Cabinet Sub Committee level over the last while,” Mr Martin said, reports Breaking News.
“The big challenge always in a Referendum is the balance between that which you put into the constitution in terms of a basic principle and the role of the Government and the Oireachtas of the day in terms of resources. Ultimately because our constitution is based on judicial interpretation in our democracy and the separation of powers we want decisions on policy to be ones that would ordinarily be taken by the Oireachtas and by the Government of the day. That is the balance that we have to get right here,” reports Breaking News.
“It is about issues pertaining to care and so on. So there are issues there that we need to get right. There is a lot of work that has been put into this. When one changes the constitution, it is a very fundamental piece of work. It has a lot of knock on impacts. It is not like drafting legislation or creating a new policy,” Mr Martin added, reports Breaking News.
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