Children’s referendum - Yes vote to be warmly welcomed

The passage of the children’s referendum is warmly welcomed. It may have been much closer than early polls indicated, but it was still passed by a comfortable margin of 58% to 42%.

Partisans on either side of the issue will attribute the make-up and size of the vote to different issues. In the days leading up to the ballot there were predictions that the turnout would be lower than the 1979 referendum turnout of less than 29%, but it was higher, at 33.49%. It became the seventh referendum in which the turnout was less than 35%.

Tánaiste Éamon Gilmore, who was disappointed by the size of the turnout, suggested that it might be necessary to look more closely at the issue of holding any future referendum on a Saturday. In 2002, the last time a referendum was held on a Saturday, the turnout was 49.47%, so it would seem that the day of the week was not the main factor in the latest low turnout.

Others have argued that the turnout was more a reflection of voter disillusionment, or a degree of apathy as the outcome seemed like a foregone conclusion. Some might even suggest that the fact that almost two thirds of eligible voters did not bother to vote was a sad reflection on this society’s concern for the welfare of children. But that would be much too simplistic.

The issues at stake in the referendum were never likely to involve more than a tiny minority of voters, and very few children. The overwhelming majority of people care about the welfare of their children, and few parents were ever likely to think that the referendum would apply to their children, because the changes were designed to protect the minority of children who are abandoned, neglected, or abused.

There was very little political engagement in the actual referendum, seeing that all of the political parties endorsed the proposal. The aim of the amendment was not to limit the rights of parents, but to ensure that the best interests of the child would henceforth be the paramount consideration.

The breakdown of the vote will undoubtedly provide interesting material for the political scientists to analyse, especially why the no vote was strong in the border counties, and in some poorer areas.

The editor of Alive magazine, Fr Brian McKevitt, yesterday questioned the role of the media. He sounded conveniently oblivious to the fact that he and his magazine are part of the media.

There was some irrational scare-mongering, with suggestions that the amendment was somehow designed to eliminate the family from the Constitution, or that the State was asking to be empowered to take children away from their families.

Last week’s Supreme Court decision that the Government’s spending of public money on the information campaign was not fair, raises issues that will have to be looked very closely when the court releases its detailed reasoning in next month.