Constitutional Convention to hold meeting in DCU

The Constitutional Convention will host a public meeting in the Helix on Monday November 11th, as part of a series of public meetings which aim to ask the public to help ‘set the agenda’ on the next issues for constitutional review.

The DCU meeting is one of eight taking place across the country in the coming month. The public forum is open to both DCU students and the general public.

The DCU event will be the first of two Dublin-based meetings, followed by a meeting on November 13th in the Royal Irish Academy.

The Constitutional Convention was established in 2012 with the aim of discussing proposed amendments to Bunreacht na hÉireann. It consists of a panel of 100 including members of the general public, members of the Oireachtas and members of the Northern Ireland’s political parties

So far, the Convention has made a series of proposals to the government including extending voting rights to Irish citizens abroad and lowering the voting age to 16. It also strongly recommended that a referendum be held so as to allow civil marriage for same-sex couples.

The Convention has also rejected a number of proposals including shortening the presidential term and changing the electoral system in general elections.

The group has said that the meetings will have ‘no rigid agenda or focus’ and are being held instead to provide two-way communications with the public.

Chairman of the Convention, Tom Arnold, will address the crowd and talk through work done thus far by the group.

“We already have a couple of thousand submissions about this,” Arnold said, “but we felt that in order to engage more fully with the public, we would have to have a series of meetings around the country.”

The first meeting was held in Cork on Saturday November 2nd and the final meeting will be held in Monaghan on November 25th.

The College View will be live blogging from the Helix on the night.

Finnian Curran

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