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Irish voters have flatly rejected the government’s proposal to amend the country’s constitution in two areas relating to women and families.
Two referendums on Friday had proposed recognizing families based on “lasting relationships”, not just marriage, and eliminating references to a woman’s “domestic life” by including other family members among health workers.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said on Saturday that both proposals had been rejected.
“I think it’s clear at this stage that the referendums on the Family Amendment and the Care Amendment were defeated – comprehensively defeated thanks to a respectable turnout,” he told reporters.
“It was our responsibility to convince the majority of people to vote ‘yes’ and we clearly failed to do that,” he said after Friday’s vote, which precedes local and European elections in June and general elections due within a year.
Having lost “so badly” means that many people “got it wrong and I am certainly one of them”, Varadkar said, adding that the government will fully respect the outcome of the vote.
Varadkar had said before the vote that defeat would be a “setback”. Ireland is proud of its progressive reputation and has revised its constitution in recent years to allow divorce, abortion and same-sex marriage.
Official results were still coming in and full results were not expected until Saturday evening. But all indications from the start of the count were that voters had rejected both amendments and by mid-afternoon the leaders of all three parties that make up the governing coalition conceded defeat.
On a ballot paper in south County Wexford, a voter had written “language too vague, try again” instead of indicating “yes” or “no,” broadcaster RTÉ reported.
Varadkar had called Friday’s votes a “value statement about what we stand for” and an opportunity to remove “very old-fashioned and very sexist language” from the 1937 constitution.
Opposition to the care amendment did not focus on the state’s obligation “to ensure that mothers are not forced by economic necessity to engage in work while neglecting their domestic duties”, which critics say does not reflect Ireland modern. They instead rejected the narrowness of the proposed new definition of caregiver, which would have excluded non-family members.
Tom Clonan, an independent senator whose son has a neuromuscular disease and uses a wheelchair, said he was relieved that the wording “toxic to the rights of disabled citizens and carers” had been rejected.
The government “did not convince”, said Mary Lou McDonald, leader of the opposition Sinn Féin party, which according to polls is the most popular in Ireland and which supported the “yes/yes” vote. “Their job was to get over the line.”
He said the government “did not listen” when it rejected wording proposed by a citizens’ assembly and a parliamentary committee to recognize care both in and out of the home.
Marie Sherlock, a senator from the opposition Labor Party, called it a “sad day for those who have tried for many decades to achieve. . . sexist language out of the Constitution.”