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DUBLIN — Ireland’s effort to remove old-fashioned family values from its constitution suffered a double defeat Saturday as voters rejected the amendments on offer as maddeningly vague and threatening to property rights.
The leaders of Ireland’s three-party government conceded defeat as early returns from Friday’s referendums confirmed that an overwhelming majority of voters had said “no” to its proposed replacements for constitutional clauses on marriage and family care. Full official results are expected Saturday night.
The outcome means that the 1937 constitution, the legal bedrock for the Irish state, will continue to declare marriage a requirement for any family, while women’s value to society comes from delivering “duties in the home.”
Those notions from a bygone era contrast starkly with the reality of Ireland today, where two-fifths of children are born out of wedlock and most women work outside the home.
The government, with support from all the main opposition parties, had wanted the public to accept two amendments. One recognized that people in “other durable relationships” could form family units too. The other said providing care should be a responsibility for the wider family, not just the mother.
But the government struggled to define what “other durable relationships” might mean in legal disputes, fanning conservatives’ fears in this property-obsessed land that inheritance rights might become a broadening battleground involving estranged wives, live-in girlfriends and other relations.
To the irritation of the left, the government also declined to amend the long-criticized “women in the home” section by using stronger language contained in recommendations from a citizens’ assembly in 2021 and a parliamentary committee on gender equality in 2022.
Instead, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar unveiled different proposals in December that avoided much of what the all-party committee sought. These texts were rushed through parliament the following month with only a few hours’ debate and no detailed committee scrutiny. The vote was timed to coincide with International Women’s Day.
Prominent rights activists for the disabled and special-needs children campaigned against the government blueprint because it left the family responsible for care, while the state would “strive” to support them — viewed by many as a cheapskate cop-out.
Damaging the government’s cause was an eve-of-poll leak of internal advice from its attorney general, Rossa Fanning, cautioning that the amendments did contain debatable language that could create surprise outcomes in the courts.
“There seemed to be little interest in the government to listening to concerns on the wording, and maybe a little arrogance in believing that voters would get carried away on a wave of feminism on International Women’s Day and simply pass these two referendums,” said Laura Cahillane, an associate professor at the University of Limerick School of Law.
“You saw very little campaigning on the ‘yes’ side and very little effort to reassure people about all these concerns arising on the ‘no’ side,” she said. “When people are confused, they are more likely to reject change.”
