General Irish politics discussion thread

Think they would have been better off simply deleting the clauses rather than amending them. These should have been rolled up with the Blasphemy referendum.

In fairness that's down to the electoral commission to be sending out the info leaflets and not really anything to do with the government as they are independent. But I agree the government were asleep at the wheel for the entire run up to this, honestly don't know what they were thinking.

Dispute what? I agreed with you they were asleep at the wheel and failed pathetically at getting their message across for why anyone should vote yes/yes, BUT its also not down to them to send out the official info leaflets that's the responsibility of electoral commission which is completely independent. I did get one but it was only on Monday this week which is far too late.

The wishy washy unnecessary referendum was woke nonsense in my opinion that all parties are prone to bar Áontu

A come uppance to the nonsense was long overdue and delivered sweetly by democracy

Well it certainly wasn't intended as a troll word in my post,it's a genuinely held view that there's a tendency to manufacture problems where they don't exist

Noone bar religious zealots today probably believe a woman's place is in the home,even if our constitution was written at a time that was normal

I do not think another 23 million should be wasted re running a referendum on the matter

It would be better spent providing rest bite for carers,imagine what a difference 46 million would do there

It means they publicly accept that they got it totally wrong. While it might be a doh, moment, such acknowledgment is important in a democracy.

Is it real though

What does "publically accept" and "acknowledgement in a democracy " mean

In my opinion, if the referenda had just proposed to delete the relevant articles from the Constitution they would have passed.

Even if the wording was slightly different as in "durable relationships as defined in legislation", it probably would have passed. The people aren't stupid. They saw the mess that the 8th amendment created by vague language and have been wary ever since.

On the carer referendum, the meaning of "strive" is completely unclear. It could mean nothing is obliged on the government, but here's a thing, on the other side of that argument, if it did mean something, if the referendum had passed, carers would have had more rights in the Constitution than the elderly and disabled people that they are caring for.

Lack of clarity.

We also need to look again as the Citizen's Assembly set-up. Are they truly representative?

The referenda were so comprehensively voted down that the wisdom of holding them must also be questioned, no matter the wording, and that comes from the citizens assembly.

Yes, that's a good summation. One might initially have thought it was an anti-FF/FG/Green vote but we've heard the opposition parties take just as much criticism in the last 24 hours. It seems people were unhappy with the actual referendum itself, how it was worded and so on.

The constitution is the wrong forum for what is essentially social policy. Some of the new wording really came across as virtue-signalling.