National Honours System for Ireland

galvianlord

Does anyone have any thoughts of the merits or otherwise of a proposed national honours system. We are after all one of the few states in the world that does not have a system in place to honour our own citizens.

Hagar

I have nothing against a person being made an award for an achievement but to somehow infer that that person is a better "person" in some way is to demean all others and that in my humble opinion is wrong. We are all equal as stated clearly in our Constitution.

Irish Constitution wrote:

Article 40
1.All citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal before the law.
This shall not be held to mean that the State shall not in its enactments have due regard to differences of capacity, physical and moral, and of social function.
2.
1° Titles of nobility shall not be conferred by the State.
2° No title of nobility or of honour may be accepted by any citizen except with the prior approval of the Government.

constitutionus

yup. im the same.

ive no problem with people being lauded in the media for their deeds and in fact more power to em but the notion of anyone being elevated above everyone else in a republic kinda rankles with me and lets be honest, if we did have an honours system in this country it'd ineveitably become an "old boys club" for party hacks and political donators. thats just the nature of our leaders

playing devils advocate though if i was to support this idea i suppose the best way of doing something like this would be to put it to the people in a referendum like situation, and if over half the electorate support honouring someone that'd be that . i wouldnt leave it to the politicians to decide who merits what honor.

this way at least it would remain an exception. honoring someone who did something absolutley astounding ,curing cancer for instance, with prehaps only one or two people being honored every couple of decades. instead of becoming the irish version of an OBE .

flogen

I wouldn't be all that opposed to a national honours system and wouldn't see it as "elevating someone above others" - just honouring them like you would when you praise a person for their good work.

I wouldn't support it if it was the Dáil that decided the honours, however, as it would become something of a boys club - honouring people who did good for a party rather than a country.

Some kind of QUANGO, perhaps, with the President at the helm (no harm giving them something else to do).

Dublin's Finest

I don't think they're great ideas.

The British system is hardly a meritocracy. I know there's a bit of disquiet in the Dept. of Foreign Affairs over the number of our citizens being honoured by that system. But this is no way of halting that.

And what happens if a person gets such an award and then later does something to discredit themselves? Would they lose the award? Would they keep it and cast the system in doubt?

There's too many problems with it. I'd have to agree with the Constitution point as well; such a system doesn't fit well with the rights set down by our constitution.