A referendum to allow Ireland to join the European Union patent court was due to be held next month but was quietly shelved following the family and care debacles. Ratification of the unified patent court, which would streamline patent applications for Irish businesses, innovators and content creators across Europe, was unlikely to have generated quite the same passion and division as the two March votes, but the government still bottled it.
The reason given by Peter Burke, the enterprise minister, was the fear that the European and local elections, to be held on the same day, would “crowd out a debate” on the patent referendum.
I’d have thought that was the best possible argument for proceeding with the planned poll, given that this government has almost certainly had its bellyful of referendum debates and it’ll be a cold day in hell before they embark on another campaign, even for an apparently uncontentious amendment.
It’s difficult to see how the patent debate could have become quite as red in tooth and claw as the last two, had it been allowed to proceed to schedule. But held in isolation, a vote on the transfer of jurisdiction from the Irish courts to an international court, even on something as relatively niche as patent litigation, could well blow up into a proxy poll on EU membership and consequent immigration obligations.
The family and care referendums were expected to be shoo-ins, too, and look how that turned out. The problem with asking the public a question is not just that they don’t always give the answer you wanted, but that they sometimes answer a question you never asked at all. Small wonder, then, that the holding of a housing referendum was fudged in the Housing Commission report, leaked last week after sitting for 13 days on the housing minister’s desk.
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Sinn Fein has pledged that, if elected, it will hold a referendum enshrining a constitutional right to housing. But then, the party also pledged to re-run the family and care referendums if those were lost, but has now changed its mind.
The commission called for a “radical strategic reset” of the government’s housing policy, which is a euphemism for “throw it out and think again”. This administration probably won’t need any encouragement to scrap a housing referendum, and if Sinn Fein has any sense, it will also have a “radical strategic reset” of its plans for any such poll.
Because if the government and opposition thought they got a hiding over the recent referendums, it is nothing compared with what awaits them if they proceed with an even more ludicrous, wasteful, utterly unnecessary and inevitably divisive poll on housing. And as with the last outing, even if they got the answer they want, the result would be even more chaos than if it were defeated.
Basically, the Housing Commission has concluded that the constitution does not need to be amended to allow for legislation to address the housing crisis. As the report states in plain language: “The current constitutional position does not pose an undue barrier to measures designed to tackle the housing crisis.”
And yet, in a majority report, the commission has advised the holding of a referendum to address what it called “a pervasive perception, particularly among government actors and legislators, that the constitution does, in fact, present such a barrier”. Let us pause to unpack that line.
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What they’re saying, in effect, is that our politicians are too stupid to understand the constitution, or too cynical and hellbent on a virtue-signalling referendum, to accept that one would be completely unnecessary.
In a trenchant minority report, commission members Michael O’Flynn and Ronan Lyons have poured scorn on the proposal to hold a referendum solely to comfort the hard-of-thinking. Describing the proposal as “misguided” and “unjustifiable”, they say: “Constitutional referendums are expensive and time-consuming undertakings. While there are many different reasons why a constitutional referendum might be required, allowing one to take place in order either to correct a perception or to engage in the signalling of values, would seem to fail any reasonable bar for such an amendment.”
And then there’s the lively issue of an amendment wording, on which the commission has failed to agree. The majority suggest enshrining “a right of access to adequate housing”.
Considering the fun we had debating “durable relationships”, imagine the myriad potential interpretations of “adequate housing”. I suspect that my definition of an “adequate house” might differ from that of Denis O’Brien, for example, while the poor divils camped in tents along the Grand Canal right now might take another view.
But let’s say that a right to “adequate housing” is approved, with the inevitable dilution of private property rights in a country that obsesses over home ownership. What it will mean, say Lyons and O’Kelly, is an individual, justiciable right to housing, rather than a systemic approach to the crisis as a whole.
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In other words, people with sufficient resources will be able to go to the High Court to enforce their right to an “adequate house” but, since the court will be unable to magic up a property that is demonstrably unavailable, the solution will be to award damages. And, as retired judge Deirdre Murphy recently observed, only “paupers and multimillionaires” can afford to access the High Court — that hardly sounds like a recipe for housing equality. It will also divert resources away from addressing the housing crisis and into the pockets of lawyers and litigants. Time, perhaps, for a “radical strategic reset” of the whole idea?
I predict that a housing referendum would prove to be the Bambie Thug of constitutional reform: a fleeting source of heat, light and performative politicking, never to be heard of again.
Exodus of talent means 2fm won’t be missed
It will be 45 years on Friday since RTE launched its second radio station named, with an astonishing leap of the imagination, RTE Radio 2. The first voice was that of Brendan Balfe, then a whippersnapper of 33, and he introduced its first DJ, Larry Gogan, a positively geriatric 45.
Since those of us in single-channel land — a galaxy far, far away as far as modern youth are concerned — couldn’t even get Top of the Pops in those days, and the reception for Radio Luxembourg was hit and miss, Radio 2 was a teen cultural godsend. You could finally hear Abba’s latest single without having to schlep into a record shop and buy a 45rpm vinyl disc to be played till it wore thin. The station was compulsive listening if The Kennedys of Castleross or The Gay Byrne Hour weren’t your thing.
But who listens to 2fm today? The latest figures suggest an average daily audience of 130,000 but its blend of chart tunes and wacky presenters is indistinguishable from those of rival independent stations aimed at the young audience. Except young people don’t listen to radio — they listen to podcasts or downloaded albums or their own playlists on Spotify.
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The 2fm audience is more likely to be made up of tradespeople in need of background noise, or “family carers”, as the government would have recast homemakers, pottering around the kitchen of a morning. Most of those, I suspect, are as old as the station itself and will be less than devastated by the imminent departure of Jennifer Zamparelli, Doireann Garrihy and the 2 Johnnies, Johnny Smacks and Johnny B.
The recent crackdown on perks might have been a factor in the loss of the career culchies and of Garrihy, who presented a morning show with Donncha O’Callaghan and Carl Mullen and conspired with them to create the worst television programme in the history of Irish broadcasting, The Full Irish Hidden Camera Show. If you want to establish how far your toes can curl involuntarily, for Guinness World Records purposes, give it five minutes.
If these broadcasters represent the pinnacle of 2fm’s “talent” then it is time to pull the plug. As Kevin Bakhurst, the director-general, suggested this week, they have had the benefit of the RTE platform to enhance their profiles before jumping ship — and who could blame them?
Listening to radio is like voting conservative: if you have a brain, you come to it eventually. The best option would be to shut down 2fm and pump any savings into the marvellous RTE Lyric FM. If Marty in the Morning is good enough for Sarah Jessica Parker, an avowed fan, he’s good enough for you. Especially if you remember when Gogan was the hottest DJ on Radio 2.
