What do these parts of the constitution mean?

daragh8008

Hi Folks,

just wondering if anyone could explain what these two sections of the Irish constitution mean?
Article 15:
4. 1° The Oireachtas shall not enact any law which is in any respect repugnant to this Constitution or any provision thereof.

and
Article 45:
2. The State shall, in particular, direct its policy towards securing:

iv. That in what pertains to the control of credit the constant and predominant aim shall be the welfare of the people as a whole.

I read the tread on the constitutionality of the bailout, but what interests me is if the government are able to take actions with respect to credit which do not benefit "the welfare of the people as a whole" How should this be interpreted. As in does it refer the credit taken on by the government or in the control of credit agencies etc. I'm particularly interested in peoples view on the transfer of privately held credit (bond holders & banks) to publicly held credit (bond holders and state) which is clearly not to the benefit of the welfare of the people. Your views Please...

MagicSean

Article 15 is pretty self explanatory.

As to Article 45, the bailout can be argued to benefit the welfare of the people by ensuring our whole economy doesn't collapse.

daragh8008

Indeed the bailout could be argued in that light. Not that I would believe it. But the transfer of private debt to public is certainly not in our interest. With out doing that the need for a bailout would be greatly reduced. There is a clear distinction in my mind about the bailout and what the government did in relation to their banking friends. would you not agree?

usernamegoes

It's moot really as Art 45 is non-justiciable i.e can't be used in court as per the first para of Art 45

The principles of social policy set forth in this Article are intended
for the general guidance of the Oireachtas. The application of those
principles in the making of laws shall be the care of the Oireachtas
exclusively, and shall not be cognisable by any Court under any of
the provisions of this Constitution.

daragh8008

ah! must of missed that bit. Very interesting. So basically it is complete lip service and more of a space filler rather than anything that could actually be used to protect society from our politicians. Thanks for clearing that up but it does seem bizarre that things would be in the constitution that have no real bearing on how government acts.

daragh8008

Sorry about this. Maybe I’m just having a stupid day but I still don’t understand 1) what does it actually mean, 2) if it can’t be acted upon what the point of having it in the constitution.

234

It's just another kind of political pressure and sets out a vague political ideology for the government of the day. The first line pretty much says it all

The principles of social policy set forth in this Article are intended for the general guidance of the Oireachtas.

FreudianSlippers

daragh8008 wrote: »

Indeed the bailout could be argued in that light. Not that I would believe it. But the transfer of private debt to public is certainly not in our interest. With out doing that the need for a bailout would be greatly reduced. There is a clear distinction in my mind about the bailout and what the government did in relation to their banking friends. would you not agree?

Google "too big to fail" re: the US bailout. Not saying I agree that we should have adopted that theory here, but everyone blames the EU, but seems to gloss over the fact that they wanted to to act differently but we followed the US suit when it came down to it - flying in the face of the fact that we don't print our own currency and devalue it like the US does (if we did it still wouldn't make a difference).