Imagine that in a few years' time, your 20-, 21or 22-year-old son is in a nightclub where he meets a girl whom he likes. She's dressed to kill, wielding a vodka and orange like a weapon of mass distraction and wearing a smile of welcome that charms the pants off your son. She's 18, she says, and a journalism student. She doesn't normally come here, but has been told the male talent is above average. She smiles coquettishly at this point, and your son is hooked. He and his new friend spend the rest of the night talking. The talking leads to touching; the touching leads to sex, as the Rilo Kiley song playing in the background has it.

(This is a cool nightclub. ) Boy and girl part, with no plan to meet again. In the following weeks, your son remembers the night, and the girl, only with affection.

I'm sorry to tell you, but your son is a criminal; and not only a criminal but somebody who, after he is arrested and charged by the garda�, will be forbidden from defending himself properly in court.

The girl was 15, you see, though she did a damn good impression of an 18-year-old student, not least of which was her ability to be served vodkas and coke all night.

She's pregnant; her parents, understandably upset, have created such fuss that your son, who had given her his mobile number, is arrested and charged with statutory rape.

That might be one of the things to consider when you come to vote in the proposed children's referendum, whenever the government gets around to holding it. A few weeks ago, the current coalition announced the wording, a mish mash of proposals and aspirations which it is asking you to accept in their entirety, or reject in their entirety.

Cynicism alone would be good enough reason to vote against the referendum. In its 10 years in power, PD/Fianna F�il has shown little enough interest in children's rights, and presides over some of the worst conditions for children in the developed world. Its sudden conversion to the needs and concerns of the youngest amongst us is, therefore, scarcely credible.

As it will be trumpeting its referendum as a response to particular problems facing our children, or as an attempt to give them rights and protections they should have had by now, the government deserves to have its proposals examined in much more detail than has so far been the case. Partly, this lack of investigation has to do with the fact that it will be the autumn at the earliest before the referendum is held; partly it's to do with the government's success in portraying itself as being on the side of the angels when it comes to children. But under the radar, there has been enough early disgruntlement about the proposals to threaten their successful adoption. You can't pick and choose amongst the proposals, remember; if you don't like any section of the wording, you will have to vote against the whole kit and caboodle.

So far, some of the reservations have been to do with the way that the referendum will, according to some people, change the balance of power within the family, tilting it away from parents and towards the child; it also, according to some conservative commentators, allows the state more power to interfere in the family unit than is strictly necessary. Expect to hear more about this in the coming months.

Then there is the proposal which would allow "soft" information (which is to say rumour, innuendo, and unproven allegations) about suspected paedophiles to be shared amongst state agencies. At the moment, there are constitutional bars on such sharing of information, which will be removed if this referendum is passed. I don't suppose there will be great public opposition to such a suggestion, but unless this element of the proposals is explained satisfactorily, there will be a reasonable number of people with concerns about privacy rights who will feel obliged to vote against the referendum.

Another concern relates to the scenario with which we kicked off this column.

The move to eliminate the defence of honest mistake began in the wake of the hysteria which followed last year's CC case, in which an 18-year-old man successfully challenged the constitutionality of the law on statutory rape. He had been charged with the rape of a 14year-old girl, but said the sex was consensual and that the girl had told him she was 16. Because the law did not allow for this defence of honest mistake, he argued that it was unconstitutional. He won his case.

Rather than change the law to allow a jury of 12 men and women to consider whether an honest mistake had been made, the government is now changing the constitution to rule out absolutely such a defence. On two levels, this seems like a flawed approach:

firstly, because there will always be situations, however infrequently they may occur, when somebody genuinely believes that his sexual partner has reached the age of consent (because she told him, because she is being served drink in a bar or night club, because she has shown him a credit card or passport belonging to her older sister); and secondly because it interferes with the right of a jury to hear the full facts in a criminal case.

I would put money on any Irish jury being able to tell the difference between a 45-year-old man preying on or abusing a teenage girl and somebody in his late teens or early 20s who has made a genuine error. For somebody in the latter situation to be denied an opportunity to make any sort of a defence in court seems like the opposite of justice. It also, in the absence of a proper explanation by the government of its proposal, seems like another reason to vote against the referendum.