First meeting of Constitutional Convention today
The first meeting of the Constitutional Convention takes place in Dublin today.
The 100 members of the Convention, made up of randomly selected citizens, along with 33 parliamentarians from the Oireachtas and Northern Ireland Assembly, will be addressed by both the Taoiseach and Tánaiste at Dublin Castle.
Among the issues being examined by the Convention is the reduction of the voting age to 17 and the shortening of the Presidential term.
Colm O'Gorman from Amnesty International Ireland said that although its establishment is welcomed, the Convention does not go far enough.
"I have to say that we're were disappointed with the very narrow remit that it's been given by Government," he said.
"The Government has set out a number of areas that it should consider. The first set of areas that it's going to consider are rather uncontroversial issues.
"But what the convention won't do is to undertake the broader view of the Constitution that we saw in a poll in the Irish Times this week [that] 60% of Irish people want to see, it's not going to consider key human rights issues social, economic and cultural rights."
