Sir, – The furore about outdated gendered language in Article 42.1 is a useful red herring ("Citizens' Assembly backs call for 'women in the home' clause to go", News, February 16th).
The real problem is that, even if updated, Article 42.1 would still be fundamentally too Scandinavian for Irish consumption. Ireland, a country where two average salaries often are barely enough to comfortably live on, is already in structural breach of Article 42.1.
Updating “mother” to (for example) “carers and parents” would involve endorsing an even wider, and very un-Irish, commitment to, for example, “ensure that parents/carers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties as carers/parents”.
The implications of that kind of wishy-washy socialism for the booming property, childcare and healthcare markets are too awful to contemplate.
Thank goodness that the independent Citizens’ Assembly is independently doing the right thing by independently recommending outright deletion. – Yours, etc,
SEÁN MacCANN,
Trillick,
Co Tyrone.