Poll to proceed despite ruling of bias

The campaign for a yes vote in the children’s referendum was thrown into disarray as the Government faced down calls to postpone tomorrow’s poll after the Supreme Court ruled it had squandered €1.1m of taxpayers’ money on a biased information campaign.

The judgment saw recriminations fly within the cross-party consensus pushing for the constitutional change, as Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin attacked the Government’s “arrogance and incompetence”.

However, both opposition parties said they would still be calling for a yes vote — although leading no campaigners warned such a result would now be “contaminated”.