Irish taxpayers Friday voted down two amendments that would have removed pro-family language from the Constitution.
Article 41.2 of Ireland’s Constitution declares, “[T]he State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved. The State shall therefore endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.”
Some Irish officials have taken issue with the article’s language about women being vital to the home, with Prime Minister Leo Varadkar calling it “very old-fashioned, very sexist language about women.” In 2022 the Joint Committee on Gender Equality of the Irish Government called for a referendum on the item and demanded that it be changed to language that is more “gender-neutral” and less “sexist.” An amendment was proposed to remove the term “woman” entirely from the article.
Another constitutional amendment was put forth to change the definition of family from one that is founded on marriage to one that includes any “durable relationship,” such as unmarried cohabitation.
Voters overwhelmingly rejected both amendments, which came as an unexpected shock to government officials and other elites.
“Clearly we got it wrong,” Varadkar said at a press conference. “While the old adage is that success has many fathers and failure is an orphan, I think when you lose by this kind of margin, there are a lot of people who got this wrong, and I am certainly one of them.”
“It was our responsibility to convince the majority of people to vote ‘Yes,’ and we clearly failed to do so,” he added.
According to poll results, 73.93% of voters rejected the amendment on the definition of family, while 67.7% rejected the amendment on the language about women in the home, reports The New York Times.
But University of Galway’s Irish Center for Human Rights Director Professor Siobhán Mullally insists that Irish taxpayers do, in fact, want the language removed.
“It was a hugely missed opportunity,” Mullally told Fox News. “Most people certainly want that sexist language removed from the constitution. There’s been calls for that for years, and it’s taken so long to have a referendum on it. But they proposed replacing it with this very limited, weak provision on care.”
