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With three weeks remaining before Irish citizens vote on an amendment to the constitution, information on the proposed changes arrived in most letter boxes this week.

The Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, has announced that the Children's Referendum will be held on Saturday November 10; only the second time that a referendum will be held on a Saturday, the other one was the second referendum on the Nice Treaty, which was held on Saturday October 19 2002.

Ahead of this year’s hotly contested US presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, the West of Ireland Chapter of Democrats Abroad Ireland will hold a non-partisan voter registration drive tomorrow, September 22, from 10am to 3pm on Shop Street adjacent to the outdoor market at St Nicholas Church. A table will be staffed by volunteers who will assist all American citizens in Galway and the west to vote in November’s election.

American citizens in Galway who want to vote in November’s election are encouraged to take part in a voter registration drive which takes place in the city this Saturday.

Jim Higgins MEP for Ireland North West has this week called on the Government to review the voting rules for Irish citizens living abroad, who lose the right to vote once they leave the Irish State. “The day you leave Ireland, you lose your right to vote in Irish elections. I think this is fundamentally wrong,” said Mr Higgins. All other EU states, bar Malta, make provision so that people living abroad can continue to vote for the government of their native land for a certain period of time after they leave. This will be especially prevalent come the referendum on Children’s Rights expected later this year.

At a critical stage in the evolution of the State, we failed to use our education system to address the question of constitutional illiteracy when it might have developed the capacity of citizens to engage critically with their State. We opted for different versions of unthinking nationalism when we might at least have opted for thinking nationalisms.

It’s the last chance to nominate deserving members of the public for this year’s People of the Year Awards.

Fine Gael MEP Jim Higgins has suggested that voting turnout for elections and referendums would be considerably increased if polling stations were established in third level colleges and institutions.

It is perhaps quite apt that Druid is performing a selection of Tom Murphy plays these weeks in Galway. Murphy fans will remember the character of Pete Mullins in A Crucial Week In the Life Of A Grocer's Assistant, who opened all of his utterances and his conversations with "we'll have snow, ha?" Mullins, based on a real character in Murphy's hometown of Tuam said this, not because he genuinely believed that the white stuff was imminent, but because he wanted to contribute to the discourse of the day, to get a spake in, no matter how ridiculous what he was saying. It was his 'in" into a conversation. It was his way of contributing to the noise. In one way, if Peteen Mullins were alive today, he'd be stuck into the discourse of the referendum. He’d want to contribute to the noise, not to add anything to the conversation, but just to make the sound, to be heard.

Fine Gael Mayo TD John O’Mahony has said that a Yes vote in the Stability Treaty Referendum is the only way to guarantee we have access to the ESM, Europe’s new bailout fund. Deputy O’Mahony, added that despite what Sinn Féin and others may claim, the situation has been clarified by the Referendum Commission.