8 - Contesting Family, Education, andWelfare Rights

Summary

…As a mother having him actually look at me and acknowledge that he knew I existed, you know, that recharges a mother. It enabled me to bring much more of myself to him. In practical ways within the family the fact that he was looking at brothers and sisters reinforced their interest in him. You know everything seemed to run better…every single thing he gained had huge practical consequences for us…

– Kathryn Sinnott, 2001

[T]he rights to be found in the Constitution, anyway as elaborated by the judiciary, on the whole, protect the advantaged more than the disadvantaged. Examples are the rights to reputation, privacy and property and the right to do business (It is worth noticing that no one seems to have suggested that the last two are socio-economic rights and, hence, that they ought not to receive strong judicial protection). By contrast, the rights, which might help the disadvantaged – equality, free speech and socio-economic rights – have not been emphasised by the judiciary.

– David Gwynn Morgan, 2002

Solicitor Michael O'Mahony responded critically to the publication of the Kennedy Report (1970) into industrial school reform. He argued that the statutory definition of an ‘industrial school’ (‘a school for the industrial training of children in which children are lodged, clothed and fed as well as taught’) was inaccurate: ‘a place of detention would be closer to reality’. At the Children's Court, children usually appeared without legal representation, the majority making ‘involuntary confessions’, or admitting guilt for fear of worse punishment. Insufficient numbers of social workers ensured that children were committed for want of time to investigate their respective situations. Similarly, for want of an interested party to act on the child's behalf, appeals were almost never taken. These practices, O'Mahony claimed, raised potential constitutional claims as to ‘whether all citizens are in fact equal before the law…’ Owing to the cost of legal services, however, such challenges were unlikely to arise.

The development of family, education, and welfare rights contestations in Ireland, as O'Mahony's article indicates, cannot be understood in isolation from the semi-peripheral development of the Republic of Ireland and its welfare state. Evident in the 1922 and 1937 constitution-making processes, successive Irish governments prioritised securing stable capital flows for dominant class interests.