A sudden turn in voter sentiment helped overturn the changes to the Irish Constitution
In early February, as a referendum convened by Ireland’s coalition government to consider two proposals to change the country’s constitution approached, polls showed that a clear majority of voters intended to support this It.
Many analysts assumed this would be the last in a series of votes in recent years to amend Ireland’s 1930s constitution to reflect Ireland’s increasingly secular and liberal identity.
But as the day of the referendum, which coincided with International Women’s Day, approached, public opinion seemed to be turning: with polls showing support for the “yes” vote to plummet. When voters cast their votes Friday, they cast a definitive “no” on both proposed amendments — one to change long-criticized language about women’s duties in the home and another to broaden the definition of family outside of marriage.
The outcome was a blow to a government hoping for an easy victory. But far from proving that conservative values were sweeping the nation, the result reflected a complex interplay of factors that, analysts say, are likely to force deep government scrutiny: a weak campaign for the amendments, confusion over the proposals and lower …than expected turnout in the elections.
Ultimately, the campaign in favor of the measures was rushed and disjointed, there was confusion over the language in the proposals and fewer than half of eligible voters went to the polls.
Laura Cahillane, associate professor at the University of Limerick’s law school, said that while some were against the content of the proposed changes, “the vast majority of people just really didn’t understand it”, partly because of an ineffective campaign to push for the proposed changes to approve. proposals.
“They weren’t sure who to believe because people were saying different things, and they weren’t sure what impact it would have, if any,” she said of the constitutional referendum. “If you change the most fundamental law of our state and you can’t predict the consequences, people will just say, ‘Let’s leave it as it is because at least we know what that means.’”
The last attempt to amend the constitution came in 2018, when a previous administration proposed a vote to remove language about “women’s duties in the home” from the document. But rights groups had urged the government to slow things down and consider new language.
Ultimately, a Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality was convened in 2020 and 2021, bringing together members of the public to make recommendations. The group proposed specific wording for referendums, and a parliamentary committee later backed that language. The government then confirmed its wording for the proposals last December.
“I think when the government actually published its formulation, everyone was a little bit surprised,” said Dr. Cahillane. “There were people who warned the government at the time and said, you know, this wording has come out of nowhere and people are not very happy about it.”
The audience was asked to vote on two questions. The first, based on Article 41 of the Constitution, would have provided for a broader concept of the family by replacing the existing language to recognize a family, “whether based on marriage or on other lasting relationships , as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of society.”
The second question concerned the wording in the Constitution that women’s rights groups and those who advocate gender equality have opposed for decades: that the state “recognizes that woman, through her life at home, provides the state with a support without which the common good cannot be achieved .” are being reached.”
The wording also says that the state aims to “ensure that mothers will not be forced by economic necessity to perform labor that causes them to neglect their duties in the family.”
The public voted against replacing that language with a new article that recognized all caregivers, regardless of gender.
For many who supported reforming the provisions but were unhappy with the actual proposals, this created a dilemma. Ultimately, all major political parties in Ireland voted in favor of the proposals, as happened trade unions, charities and equality groups, including the National Women’s Council and the former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese.
But there were concerns from the start.
Many members of the political parties had supported the government’s plan for voting, but had serious reservations about the language of the proposals, and some charities that supported the changes were early advocates of rewording the proposals.
“I don’t know anyone who is happy with the government’s wording in these referenda,” said Ursula Barry, emeritus associate professor at University College Dublin. in an op-ed published in The Journal who last week advocated a “yes” vote. She added that the “government has created confusion.”
Dr. Barry, who was also an expert adviser to the Citizens’ Assembly, noted that disability advocates and women’s rights organizations had wanted stronger language setting out the government’s obligations to provide support to healthcare providers.
As the vote approached, there was limited campaigning in support of the proposals, even by the government and the other political parties that had supported a “yes” vote. And advocates had to campaign in a short time frame.
Orla O’Connor, the chief executive of the National Women’s Council of Ireland, a charity that promotes women’s rights and equality, said in a statement that “the government’s poor wording, combined with a lack of leadership from political parties, resulted confusion among voters and a lack of mobilization on the ground.”
“We campaigned for a Yes vote because we believed and continue to believe that the Irish value care, and this was reflected in the previous polling,” she added. She said the wording in the proposal “did not go far enough and as the campaign developed it became clear that the public wanted more.”
Ultimately, nearly 68 percent of voters rejected the family changes, and nearly three in four voters opposed the health care issue.
The vote on healthcare represented the highest percentage of ‘no’ votes ever in the history of healthcare Irish referendums. And less than half of eligible voters – 44 percent – turned out, marking a significant drop from 2018, when the referendum on legalizing abortion attracted almost two-thirds of eligible voters.
“In recent referendums on major social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, there have been a large number of organizations on the ground campaigning,” said Dr. Cahillane. “That has to happen, and the referendum didn’t allow that to happen this time.”
Unlike the 2015 referendum on marriage equality and the 2018 referendum on abortion, these latter proposals seemed to have had less practical impact for voters, she said.
Dr. Cahillane, who wrote extensively about the confusion surrounding the referendum ahead of the vote, said people who voted “no” represented a diversity of perspectives across the political spectrum. Some were conservative voters, others cast anti-government votes, and some feared that changing the language of the Constitution would have a negative impact on a variety of issues.
But the main cause of the defeat was likely voters who had difficulty parsing the proposals and were more likely to reject changes, she said, and the government did little to temper that.
“Of course there are people who are against this for different reasons,” she said, adding, “But the vast majority of people just didn’t understand it.”