The main purpose of that poll . . . for, as the statistics show, the government cares not a whit about the rights of children, born or unborn . . . was to wake Fianna Fail activists up from years of slumber, get them out knocking on doors, canvassing, ordering leaflets and posters, checking voting registers and reacquainting themselves with all the structures and paraphernalia of democracy.

Sure enough, a few months later, when the general election was held, the Fianna Fail organisation was fighting-fit and helped sweep their team to victory.

This year, Bertie Ahern is hoping for a repeat performance. Again, children . . . of the born variety this time . . . have been chosen as the playground on which Fianna Fail hacks can hone their canvassing skills. There seems to be a view amongst ministers that such a referendum would be reasonably trouble-free . . . who would vote against the rights of the poor, harmless, little squawkers? . . . and that it would be a helpful and harmless way to get the troops ready for battle.

They might be wrong about that.

There already exists the germ of an opposition movement to a children's referendum which might grow into something greater over the next few months. As with opposition campaigns in many referendums, it will be made up of many different views from many disparate groups.

On the one hand, you will have a conservative view which argues that giving equal rights to children undermines the central importance awarded to the family in the constitution. A more liberal opposition might query the notion of giving equal rights to children when they are patently not equal and when they are, properly and rightly, dependent for so long on so many people.

If we suddenly bombard children with constitutional rights, will they also be landed with accompanying responsibilities?

Could giving children the same constitutional rights as adults ever be used as a reason, for example, to mess around with the age of criminal responsibility? If a nineyear-old has constitutional rights and protections just as a 29-yearold does, why shouldn't he have the same legal obligations?

All these arguments can be made and tested if the government ploughs ahead with its referendum ruse. Some will fail, some will succeed. But throughout the campaign, there will be one overriding reason to vote against the referendum, and that will be to protest the cynicism of holding it in the first place. That cynicism is not simply confined to the use of the referendum as canvassing practice. It has also to do with the the government's hard neck in holding a referendum to protect children when, during its two terms in office, it has done so little to help them.

Also in last week's Sunday Tribune, Isabel Hayes and Una Mullally investigated the government's record in relation to children. Here is some of what they discovered: In 2005, almost 300 children and adolescents, some as young as nine years old, were admitted to or detained in mental hospitals because there was nowhere else to put them; there are 2,000 children on waiting lists for psychiatric assessments; waiting lists of up to three years exist for speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and educational psychology; one per cent of our budget is given to earlychildhood education; several key sections of the 2001 Children's Act have never been implemented . . . as a direct result, children are being prosecuted and sent to prison, where they are tutored in the arts of villainy.

There are many other examples of how children have been neglected by the state, but next spring, the government is planning to ask you and I to vote on a form of words purporting to give under-18s constitutional rights. In the light of the government's record on children, voting would be tantamount to giving it a free pass to do as little in the future as it has in the past. It would attach a feelgood factor to the government in relation to children to which it is not entitled, but which it would then carry with it right through to the general election.

Another problem with the referendum is to do with the wording, which will be next to impossible to compose in any meaningful manner. Barnardo's have come up with an honourable attempt, which would impose obligations on the state in relation to the children, but which is also woolly enough to allow the government to avoid its responsibilities, as it has done so far. You might as well stick in the unctuous lyrics to the Whitney Houston song, 'The Greatest Love Of All' . . .

I believe that children are our future Teach them well and let them lead the way Show them all the beauty they possess inside . . . for all the practical good they would do.

If we are serious about children's rights, we could make them an issue in the general election and vote for or against the government depending on what we thought of its record on the subject or whether we believed its promises for the future. By contrast, voting yes to a woolly wording in a plebiscite borne of cynicism would be to kick the issue of children's rights to touch rather than to place it at the top of the national agenda.

This referendum is The Greatest Ruse Of All. We will vote yes at our own peril and at the peril of the children it is supposed to protect.