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A follow-up to the Irish referenda. Both @Follamh3 and myself posted on this a few days back, and here's one reason why the Plain People Of Ireland voted (those who did turn out to vote) 70% "No" to both - nobody trusts the government because the reality on the ground is this.
The usual suspects try to pin the blame on anti-immigrant sentiment, the far-right, volatility, and just the yokels are too ignorant to know what's good for them. But the reality is, people see the disconnect between the fancy language about gender-neutral and inclusive, and what actually happens when support for carers and those in need of care is sought: you're not getting it, you're not going to get it. We think you're so special, we're going to have a referendum to put it in the Constitution! Also we can't even tell you if your kid will have a school place for the new term. Can you see why voters with that knowledge might just possibly vote "No" and still not be far-right gender-essentialist white supremacists?
Bad old sexist, misogynist, gendered language that asks the State to make sure that there won't be the necessity for choices such as the Lewis family say above about "It has left Greg and Celine in a situation where one of them will have to give up work to remain at home full-time with their son".
Shiny progressive new inclusive, non-gendered, non-marriage based language rejected by the backwards public:
I mean, c'mon! The Department of Education has been "engaging intensely with the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) in relation to the forward planning of new special classes and additional special school places". That's "striving", isn't it? Nobody said anything about actually paying out money so mothers (or fathers or non-binary babas) wouldn't have to engage in labour outside the home and wouldn't be at a loss by this, unlike the bad old 1937 Catholic bigots!
Everything else aside, it boggles the mind that it is considered appropriate for a non-verbal student to be mainstreamed.
There is the trend now to put kids in mainstream education if they are capable. If he's otherwise smart, he may be able to learn in mainstream setting with support. If he can't get a place in a special school and there's a mainstream place available, then it's wasting time to have him sitting at home doing nothing. The problem seems to be all the special schools are full and the mainstream schools can't accommodate his needs.
Non-verbal may be more akin to being spastic than to being intellectually disabled. The idea is to encourage and enable, by mingling with ordinary children, children with additional needs to achieve what they can, rather than using special schools as a dumping-ground. Some kids are going to be so severely impaired that mainstreaming is impossible, but for others, with adequate supports, they can get on.
In the past I've worked in vocational rehabilitation for developmentally disabled young adults, usually medium-functioning autistic young men. They came from a range of backgrounds, some of them being quite poor others firmly middle class. We provided an opportunity for them to do real work with non-disabled cooworkers but in a setting with professional support staff available for them when needed. There was an obvious gap in ability and self confidence between those who had been mainstreamed and those who had gone to "special schools as a dumping-ground". Their disability levels were otherwise very similar but those who had been largely schooled and housed together with the profoundly disabled were much harder to rehabilitate. Another interesting observation from that job: while most of our clients were between 18-25, their parents were still quite involved in their lives. Many of them had received extensive coaching by their parents to play-up or play-down their disability based on the audience. Around authority figures, anyone w' the gov't or in a medical setting they acted more disabled, when around family or especially their mother's friends it was the exact opposite. This was a problem as they tended to slot us into the "authority figure" role and calibrate their behavior accordingly which was very unhelpful in a vocational setting where we were trying to teach them skills and asses their competency levels.
Yeah, that's part of the problem I've mentioned before about gaming the system. Some do it in good faith as the only way they've found to get anyone to pay attention to the problem - if the kid is deemed capable, then any supports stop there even if needed. So the parents are nearly forced into exaggerating the problem in order to get anything done.
Some people do it deliberately and will coach/bully the kids into acting 'more disabled' so that the parent(s) can get more goodies (not that there are a lot of goodies going); for instance, from my social housing days, I heard the story of one parent who wanted a new house because her child was a wheelchair user and she claimed the doorways in her current house were too small for the wheelchair to pass through.
The problem there was that (1) the guys who went out and measured the doorways were sure they were plenty big enough and (2) even though the child legitimately had a prosthetic limb, she was mobile and not wheelchair dependent. In fact, the same parent who said her kid needed a wheelchair to get around the house, hence why Mommy wanted one of the nice newly-built social houses to move into from the older council house she was living in, used to send her kid to pay the weekly rent and said kid walked all the way to the council offices from where they lived and back home.
Preach, brother, preach! 😁
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Question from a Yankee. How is the Irish constitution interpreted? Is it taken literally as law, or is it more "suggestive?" Those clauses you quoted kind of confuse me. Taken literally, the old one seems to be saying that all mothers are entitled to state welfare that fully supports their life, which would be very generous and I'm guessing the country didn't really follow through on that. The new one... I don't even know how to parse that. It just seems like empty words that mean nothing. But I think the constitution in European countries tends to work differently than it does in the US, less absolute and more "here's a starting block to start writing laws off of."
We're sort of in between your own Constitution, and the 'unwritten constitution' of the UK. The Constitution is the basis for law, which is why there have to be referenda to change the wording, so unlike the American decision on abortion where emanations of penumbrae were taken to mean the Constitutional right to privacy included the right to an abortion, we had to delete the article in our own constitution which explicitly made abortion illegal before our government could pass laws permitting restricted abortion.
So the 1937 language was meant to be interpreted as 'the State has a responsibility to ensure women won't be forced out of the home to work' but how that was to be achieved was left to interpretation - did it mean making sure the male breadwinner had high wages? banning married women from being employed (the marriage bar)? Other things like social welfare payments? Just ignore it as aspirational language?
As to what you say about the new suggested language, yeah. It's just empty words that sound good and enable the government to go 'look how progressive we are'.
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It varies dramatically depending on the clause. In 2018 we had a constitutional referendum on whether to repeal the 8th amendment of the constitution, a passage which expressly forbids abortion. The amendment passed and abortion became legal essentially overnight. Likewise the gay marriage referendum in 2015, which passed.
Most people I've spoken to who abstained from voting on this year's referendum used essentially your reasoning to justify their decision to stay away from the polls: that the revised wording seemed entirely symbolic and ceremonial, rather than anything which might have any meaningful impact on public policy. I don't know if that's true (I think that these amendments would have significantly impacted legislation had they gone through) but it certainly seems to have been a factor in how people voted or chose not to vote.
Well, the government tried to have it both ways. They had Roderic O'Gorman going around saying passing the referenda would mean that the courts would make the government live up to the obligations, while the leaked advice of the Attorney-General said no; also that this would have nothing to do with immigration, while the leaked advice of the Attorney-General said it would, should cases come to court.
I tend to think the public view that this was fancy language which they'd weasel out of later on, by saying they were only committed to "strive" to do stuff rather than "have to do", was correct.
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From what my admittedly lacking research tells me is that there was an initial, 'strong' version of the constitution that did enshrine them as rights, but the finance department took one look at the figures for such a welfare program and said 'no way, we can't afford it.'
So they were degraded into nonbinding 'directive principles', so it has the weight and pomp of one's Amazon wish list. But still, it is a relic of the strong Catholicism that was once strong in Ireland, which the government is now desperately trying to remove.
that makes a lot of sense.
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I think in America the schools are required to take the kids in, and if that means they have to move some educational assistants around from other assignments or have a "small group" of 15 high needs kids, it is what it is. There probably isn't a perfect solution to very high needs kids, everyone involved is just struggling along as best they can in many of those cases. The American system seems to distribute the responsibility more, maybe that's a bit better? But in America, the normal needs kids are often neglected and treated as less important, which isn't great. But either way, it doesn't seem ver related to the genderedness of the verbiage.
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Thanks for the shout out, it's 1 L FYI.
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There's still this little tickle in my hindbrain that's like 'why doesn't somebody do something about this?'
But I increasingly think this is just what people do. Absent real abiding problems, they will abstract new enemies, even (perhaps especially) in the face of real problems/enemies. We're just wired out of the womb a little 'wrong.'
Of course the problem isn't the immigrants, diversity is our strength after all, the problem is those making a fuss! If they'd just get out of the way and stop being a bother we could make some real progress
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While the story is sad, as a fellow (ex?)government employee, I would imagine that we might agree a shortfall of 6 or 8 spaces in a city the size of Dublin is essentially nothing. Too many open spots and you're wasting public funds after all.
The fact the spaces needed is so close a match for those provided is a near miracle of demand prediction.
Does the government wanting to change the Constitution really have any link to decisions on special needs places by the Department of Education, that gets the predicted demand right down to single digits?
It's not necessarily 6 to 8 spaces in all of Dublin; that's for one constituency.
It scales up to thousands of places nationwide, as per this Dáil debate:
Suppose you have to apply to 20 schools at €20 a time for a birth cert, that's already €400 just to ask "is there a place?" before ever you add in other costs of schooling. And there's no scheme to help pay for that, or "okay if you need multiple copies of the birth cert, for a special needs child, you can get them for free".
When you're a parent on an ordinary wage trying to find €400 for birth certs, pious platitudes about "getting rid of gendered language in the Constitution" is not going to help you or your kid.
To be clear this process seems pretty inefficient, but it still doesn't show that it is because time or energy was diverted to the Constitution. The bureaucrats in the DoE are almost certainly not spending time on Constitutional changes. Governments can do a lot of different things without that being the reason why they are doing some things badly.
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Gay marriage didn't help any disabled kids, either, but people voted for that.
Sure, but that was sold as "love, love, love, who can be against love?" and not "by legalising gay marriage, we will reduce depression and suicide amongst the LGBT population".
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If this article is representative, then 6-8 spaces in one subdivision of Dublin is about a 20% shortfall. I'd struggle to call that "good", nevermind a "near miracle".
That does put it in a worse light yes. But still dorsn't show a link with the Constitution, I would suggest. 30% was our shortfall in the English city I mentioned and we weren't worrying about anything more than funding, and trying to predict population fluctuations into the future.
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The government blathering on about gender equality and the role of carers and how much they're going to do for carers once the wording is passed can be doubted when you see "I can't even get a school place for my special needs kid".
Why believe in "jam tomorrow" when you're being refused "jam today"? And the point is that even Dublin has a shortfall of such places, so the situation down the country is likely even worse, as it's Dublin that gets all the resources first. "We solemnly promise to strive to support carers in the family" "Great, so our local school is going to get a special needs assistant place?" "Ah now come on, why would you expect that?"
When 6 or 8 people can't get a place for their kid, this is bad for them, but at a city level it is a rounding error.
That government doesn't deliver perfectly seems to be Constitution agnostic, as in the UK doesn't even have a formal Constitution and has the same problems. So the question is, whether linking this particular issue to the Constitution seems to be causative and I would argue it does not appear to be. You could be in a world where Ireland does not have a Constitution and still has exactly the same issue.
Just to be clear I am not arguing the Constitution should or should not have been changed, just that this particular example doesn't seem particularly linked to the Constitution at all, rather than funding constrained. The English city I worked in had even worse problems at not delivering special needs school places, and yet that wasn't impacted by whether language about supporting mothers was or was not in the Constitution, but rather the amount of money it was taking in in taxes plus it's grant from central government.
Do you have any reason to think that a shortfall of 8 special needs places in Dublin is actually linked to the way the Constitution is written? Rather than funding, or that predicting the number of places needed in advance is difficult to do perfectly?
Okay, let me explain myself. The government is the bunch that decided we needed to rewrite language in the Constitution, and they tried to sell it to the public who were, in general, "why the fuck is this considered an urgent problem when we have real urgent problems?" as among other things "we totally super promise this will mean we're fully committed legally to having to dish out the cash to pay for support for carers":
This, despite the fact that it came out that the legal advice from the Attorney-General on this was "the hell it does".
So the aftermath is all "why did people vote No, did they not believe us?" to which the answer there is "No shit, Sherlock". As to why the people didn't believe them? Cases like this: ongoing for ten years that there is a shortage of places, all the responsibility dumped on the family to make it work, and now the same guys that are telling the parents "sorry, nuffin' we can do" are going around saying "we wuv carers SO MUCH we're gonna put special language in the Constitution to say we wuv them SO MUCH!"
To get all Scriptural about this, let me quote the Epistle of St. James:
In the same way, what good is shiny new inclusive language about "carers are awesome!" if there is no movement on "okay, for ten years there's been a shortage of school places, what are you gonna do?"
EDIT: It's not just school places, it's the entire system around special and additional needs. Like I said, I worked in a school in a designated area of educational disadvantage, and now in a day service for preschool kids with additional needs, and for parents trying to get advice, recommendations, assessments, places, you name it - struggle, struggle, struggle. Funding is key, oh yes definitely: we're constantly begging for more funding, we added five additional places and could easily add even more to cope with demand but there's no funding. We're the sole centre for such children in this geographical division of an entire county outside the city. That's why all the government rhetoric over the new amendments to the Constitution, especially selling it as gender-neutral non-sexist language, was regarded with "and pigs will fly" by me and everyone I know working in the sector. 'We will strive' commits them to nothing; 'yes, we strove to see if we could fund an extra place for your kid but oopsie, no luck!' isn't much help but it means they can go around patting themselves on the back about how progressive they are now that the definition of "family" includes "if you're shacked up together and we don't even care about which gender you are".
EDIT EDIT: Suppose we give credit to Minister O'Gorman there and if enacted, the new wording would put a legal obligation on the State. The parents in the article go to court (if they can afford the lawyers) and the case trundles on for five years or so (because the Department is going to fight it). Eventually the decision is "the State must provide a place for the child". Well, if he hasn't aged out yet, the Department comes back with "fine but we gots no place". Then what?
Build more schools and hire more staff? You know how long the planning process is, how long it will be before the school is built, the arguments around where the funding to hire the staff will come from, etc. The kid could be 30 before ever anything happens to provide a new school with places for special/additional needs kids. It will benefit that set of children coming along then, but what about the current children? They're the ones with no places and no supports. And if the State is saying that they have to be forced by the courts to carry out their duty of support, that's not very promising, either.
So the State may be being terribly inefficient (believe me as an ex-civil servant this would not surprise me!), but if they aren't being inefficient BECAUSE of the Constitution. Then linking the two together just seems a reach. Are the bureaucrats in the DoE who were making projections and predicting places needed having anything to do with rewriting the Constitution? Is the amount of money the State has going to change appreciably?
In other words I can believe that the DoE is inefficient AND that changing the Constitution is a bad idea. What i still can't see is a real connecting link between those. The DoE seems unlikely to have spent much time on the Constitutional changes and even if the Cabinet Minister did, well in my direct experience the time he spent on that probably meant he was not spending his time hindering his department.
The administrative state (DoE) and the executive are largely spending their time on different things for different reasons. As in Bob in the DoE whose job it is to plan school places may be bad at his job, but it doesn't sem likely that is any way related to the Constitution aa it stands, nor is it likely he was writing Constitutional drafts.
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If they move to the American system where the families can and do sue and receive large awards and tons of legal requirements burdening the entire state if they aren't accommodated, they'll doubtless find the places soon enough. I guess it sounds like they are able to drag the cases out too long? But it also comes with its own problems.
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What is the point of paying a huge percentage of ones income as taxes if the taxing authority can't provide the services it promises and you need, when you need them?
Practically the government can't provide and predict services perfectly. So you can over provide (therefore wasting tax payer money) or try to provide services at the level you think they will be needed. Balancing how much to spend on the health services and education and roads and everything else. Too much in one area means too little in an area.
Now governments can and do get that wrong and that should be rectified and fedback into your allocation process to improve it. But crucially the amount of money you spend getting your allocation process better also sucks money from the projects in question.
So there is a level of fidelity which is somewhere less than perfect but gets you close enough. And it is likely that you will under allocate somewhere and some people will suffer. Perfect is simply not possible.
So yes, it is likely some number of taxpayers will not get services they need at the exact time they need them. Minimizing that number is important, but making it perfect even if possible probably means reducing the amount of funding you have to spend in the first place. Possibly reducing the overall number of people who can access the service at all.
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