![\"Supreme](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/O4R5V5UC35FHZDSU74F5WL4TSU.JPG\")
Supreme Court judge Gerard Hogan. Photograph: Alan Betson <\/p>\nOne day, we will have to ask if the Irish Constitution is an aid or a barrier to Irish unity, suggests Supreme Court judge Gerard Hogan. <\/p>\n
Hogan has spent a lifetime writing about the Constitution, and since 2021 has been one of the Supreme Court judges who frequently decide whether its terms have been obeyed.<\/p>\n
In a lecture in Blackhall Place on Thursday, Hogan \u2013 ever conscious of the curbs upon him as a member of the highest court \u2013 took his audience on \u201ca thought experiment\u201d about the Constitution and its significance for Irish unification.<\/p>\n
For decades, it was argued the territorial claim enshrined in Article 32 was a block to unity, but that has been removed since the Belfast Agreement referendum in 1998, the Supreme Court judge told his audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cAsk yourself has that made any difference? Are the relationships between the Northern unionist community and the rest of the island really any better in terms of potential reunification than was the case in the 1970s?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not taking sides on this, I\u2019m not offering my own views, or anything like that. I\u2019m just posing this question because, certainly, there was a lot of people in the 1970s who said, \u2018Let\u2019s do this, and that will be a precursor to the ultimate reunification.\u2019<\/p>\n
Supreme Court judge Gerard Hogan. Photograph: Alan Betson <\/p>\n
\u201cIf only these three or four things were done, that we\u2019d be well on the way to reunification. Well, they have been done, and they\u2019ve been done for a long period of time and ask yourself, are we any closer now?\u201d<\/p>\n
For years, too, it was argued that the objections of a majority in Northern Ireland<\/a> to Irish unity centred on \u201cthe special position\u201d enjoyed by the Catholic Church<\/a> in the Constitution, along with bans on divorce and contraception.<\/p>\n However, \u201cthe special position\u201d was never what it was claimed to be, he said, noting the unhappiness in the late 1930s of senior Catholic leaders that the church had not been made the State\u2019s official religion.<\/p>\n Article 44 accurately acknowledged the church was \u201cthe guardian of the faith professed by the great majority\u201d, but recognised, too, the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian Church, the Methodists, Quakers and the Jewish community.<\/p>\n The wording was supported by the minority religions, with the rabbinate committee of the Dublin Jewish community offering \u201ctender congratulations\u201d and expressing \u201cthe greatest satisfaction\u201d at the mention that they received.<\/p>\n The chosen Irish wording \u2013 though it did not include its creator John Hearne\u2019s more secular drafts \u2013 has been \u201cpresented as a kind of Hibernian exceptionalism when, in fact, it was very common on the continent of Europe in the 1930s\u201d.<\/p>\n Language of a similar hue regarding religions could be found in other constitutions of the time in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Greece covering Lutheranism, the Catholic Church or the Greek Orthodox church.<\/p>\n One of \u201cthe slightly surprising things\u201d about the criticism of Article 44 was that the United Kingdom had tougher sectarian rules, requiring the British royal family to be \u201csubscribing Protestants\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was provided for in the Act of Settlement of 1701. The Church of England was the established religion, the lord chancellor had to be an Anglican, and there were Church of England bishops in the House of Lords,\u201dHogan went on.<\/p>\n Imagine, he said, if the Republic required the President to be a Catholic, \u201cthat he or she can\u2019t marry a Protestant, that there\u2019s Catholic bishops in the Senate and that the Chief Justice had to be a Catholic, we\u2019d never hear the end of it\u201d.<\/p>\n However, Article 44 could, he suggested, offer a model for a unified island where it would be \u201cthe special position of religious\/political Protestantism\u201d that would be protected, not the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/EJXITBM3MJEEXJVXDTS7WB2UGU.jpg\")
A defaced \u2018Welcome to Northern Ireland\u2019 sign is displayed on the Irish Border in Derry. Photograph: Charles McQuillan\/Getty Images <\/p>\n