Marriage Referendum: ’I have never in my entire life felt so proud to be Irish’

I’ve never voted in Ireland because I left for good in my teens. I didn’t leave for economic reasons; I had a perfectly good job, unlike many of my peers during the late Eighties recession. No, I left for social reasons.

I didn’t know the word ‘theocracy’ back then – I was young and clueless – but I knew I didn’t want to live in a country where private lives were thought-policed by groups of men self-excluded from family life who had inordinate amounts of unelected power. Where the theocracy got into bed with you, and breathed all over you. (And that was before any of the really grisly stuff came to light). No, I did not want to live in a country like that.

But Ireland is no longer a country like that.