Tomorrow, Iris Oifigiuil, the State’s official publication for notices, will publish the official results of the Childrens Referendum held on Saturday and there is then a 7-day window for anyone to challenge the results in the courts. The betting on here is that there will in fact be a challenge following the Supreme Court judgment last Thursday which upheld a challenge to the use of public money by the Government to promote a “Yes” vote. The Supreme Court judgment, which was handed down less than 48 hours before polling started, reversed a High Court judgment the previous week – we still await the full reasons for the judgment at the Supreme Court and these are expected imminently. Pundits have now suggested that any imminent challenge to the Childrens Referendum result will face an uphill battle despite the Supreme Court ruling, this after the failure of the so-called McKenna judgment in 1995 to be held to be sufficient to overturn the results in the referendum on divorce where the “Yes” and “No” sides were very evenly balanced and ultimately just 9,000 votes separated the two sides out of 1.6m votes cast. The McKenna judgment refers to Patricia McKenna’s victory in the courts forbade governments from spending public money to promote one side in a referendum.
But for now we have the results of the Childrens Referendum which were as follows (with the results of the Fiscal Compact referendum in May 2012 and the Divorce Referendum in November 1995 for comparison)
I think it would be fair to say that many people have been shocked by the results of the Childrens Referendum where opinion polls and betting odds suggested it would be a landslide victory for the “Yes” side, where there was nary a poster to be seen across the land for the “No” side, with the “Yes” side supported by 164 of the 166 members of the Dail – Mattie McGrath was the only true opposer, we are not supposed to know what An Ceann Comhairle Sean Barrett thinks. Billionaire philanthropist Chuck Feeney was understood to be financially supporting the “Yes” side as was, in spirit, the Church (mostly), the media and as far as I could see, most professionals involved with children. The most prominent proponent of the “No” campaign, John Waters can hardly be regarded as a totemic figure with national influence.
So what on earth went wrong?
The view on here is the surprisingly large “No” vote is down to complacency about the result PLUS a general turn-off with politics.
The complacency about the result might be attributable to those, including on here for what little it’s worth, who feel that the pre-existing Constitution did provide for the adequate care of children and that it was new legislation, application of existing legislation and funding that was needed to better the lot of children, not an amendment to the Constitution. So even if the Amendment was voted down, the feeling, perhaps, was that it wouldn’t mean a great deal. There were also the opinion polls which suggested the “Yes” side would win 85:15 and Paddy Power offered odds of 1/33 for a “Yes” win, that is, a €33 bet would win you €1.
The results of the most recent opinion poll to measure party support suggested that a large number of people couldn’t or wouldn’t identify any political party or grouping deserving of their vote. Satisfaction with all party leaders is down. That’s understandable, we’re still in an economic mess and Fine Gael and more surprisingly Labour have continued the policies of Fianna Fail, and there doesn’t seem to be any widespread confidence that Sinn Fein would do any better. Of those who do express a preference for a political grouping, Fine Gael, the main party in power, remains tops with 30-35% of the vote.
An Taoiseach Enda Kenny promised a referendum on the abolition of the Seanad this year – in his address to the nation last December 4th, 2011 he stated “next year, we will hold a referendum to abolish the Seanad” and it is remarkable that after Saturday’s surprise, some have been quick to suggest we should delay future referenda until we figure out what happened. Nice try, senators and aspirants to being senators, or those who see the Seanad as a political safety net or source of party funding! It is hilarious to hear those suggesting a delay to the Seanad’s abolishment referendum until such time as we’ve established if the result was down to the referendum being held on a Saturday. Whilst the country faces into this present level of crisis and distress and whilst we are reliant on bailout funding from Denmark which abolished its own Seanad in the 1950s, your days are numbered Senators!
NAMA Wine Lake 
One should look carefully at where the “no” vote came from. People voted for change last election.Next election,now that the comedic old men are gone,they will vote “we changed our mind”
I didn’t bother to vote as I don’t believe a referendum was necessary. It won’t lead to the employment of any additional social workers or to the restoration of resource teachers or SNA’s for schoolchildren who’ve had such services cut.
Also, while we were having a referendum to give a voice to children in the Constitution what about redheads or left-handed people? Don’t they deserve a break also? Any why not insert the ‘eradication of all Third World poverty’ as an aim in the Constitution? Once you get started the list is endless of all sorts of deserving causes that should be represented in the Irish Constitution.
There is a lot of astonishment in the media about why the no vote was so strong. There is lots of speculation about people wanting to protest against the government, people being confused, dissatisfaction in working class areas, and so forth.
I don’t know why the media seems so unwilling to consider the obvious explanation. The obvious explanation is that a lot of people read the literature from the referendum commision and decided that the amendment was a bad idea.
NWL : pendant mode : you might need to edit the title on this particular blog.
I agree with the reasons expressed here with regard to the NO vote.
MAYBE PEOPLE ARE FINALLY BEGINNING TO GIVE UP ON THE IRISH DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM???
Especially when we have leading politicians who say they are “powerless” to reign in the ‘banking elite’ who are bleeding a once proud nation white.
.
Monday November 12 2012 – Major Spanish banks have agreed to stop evicting defaulting home owners in an attempt to calm increasing unrest affecting thousands and which led to two recent suicides.
The Spanish bank group said it wanted “to help alleviate the situation of helplessness that many people are suffering owing to the economic crisis.”
http://www.herald.ie/breaking-news/world-news/banks-retreat-on-mortgage-evictions-3291494.html
.
1,563 Irish suicides in 3-year period – http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/suicide-claims-1563-lives-in-3-year-period-213755.html
.
Well, it gave up on us a long time ago, so there’s no love lost anyway.
If people wish to make a protest against the Government or against ppoliticians in general (by abstaining) let them do so in an appropriate forum or manner. In line with many like minded people I am surprised by both the low turnout and the extent of the No vote.
I would certainly regard myself as one of those who were not fully informed on exactly what the “before” and “after” effects of this amendment would do for children. However, while not reading the Government literature, I did read the opinion pieces expressed by Fergus Finlay and numerous other people involved at the coal face of deprived and abused children and their rationale for supporting a Yes vote. My vote was a based on their recommendation and I am convinced that the result will benefit those children most in need of our help and support.
Let those who voted No because they didn’t understand the issues or to spite the Government think, before they use the ballot system as a weapon rather than an opportunity to improve our situation and that of those who cannot speak out for themselves.
@NWL
The low turnout: This was disgraceful but there a practical reason for some of it at least.
The polls did not open until 9am. People who work on Saturdays, especially retail, could not go the polls before work. They would have had to get to the polls on Saturday evening after a long day and a long week.
On the No Vote:
While I was as surprised as most people with the size of the no vote, the fact that the no vote was high in areas of low and no income leads on to believe that these people felt vulnerable that they could lose their children, through lack of financial resources to look after them, as determined by a bureaucratic and political elite that is alien to them. That may not be true, but there is no parent that at some stage felt some guilt on account of their parenting skills.
In addition the degree to which ‘normal’ family life has broken down in some black spot areas is not fully understood by either the media or population in general. In many ‘households’ the phrase ‘taking children into care because the ‘parents’ cannot look after them, could present a problem of definition of the term household and ‘parents’. I say that without prejudice to the efforts of most of those people to look after children often in very trying circumstances.
On a general note one wonders if the raison d’etre for the vote was not a post factum exoneration of legal profession. A legal profession that contributed to the continuation of the abuse situation in which the Roscommon children found themselves.
The legal profession can now say, however shallow it may ring, that they were constrained in their actions to protect the children before the referendum.