The Presidential Age Referendum: It never stood a chance

POOR Amendment 35. Before we move on in the new post-marriage referendum Ireland, spare a thought for the ‘Presidential Age’ one.

One of History’s also-rans. If the marriage equality referendum was Italia 90, then the Age referendum was a fringe squad player who got injured in a meaningless friendly against Azerbaijan in May of that year, fell out of love with the game and now works in a property management company. But he still keeps his Ireland caps in the pedestal of his office desk.

It never stood a chance. When people realised first there actually was a presidential age referendum, there was a sort of exasperated snort.

Having the presidential age referendum when there was so much that needs to be reformed in our political system — felt at the time like when you’ve a load of important stuff to do and you decide instead to spend time alphabetising your CDs. Except now the referendum is defeated, all our CDs are out on the floor and they’ve had to be bundled into a Lidl bag and put under the stairs.

MAYBE it was put there as a sort of lightning rod for people to give them something to write obscenities about Irish Water on them. In fact some of those who voted yes probably just voted yes on the safe side to make sure they’d voted in the right one.

Initially I didn’t even buy some of the yes arguments. One of them involved listing the Irish people who couldn’t be president — like Jesus. But even Jesus wouldn’t survive the nastiness of an Irish presidential campaign. Ten minutes after announcing his candidacy the media and the hired sleeveens of the other candidates would have been poring over his past.

Like his clear issues around responsible drinking when he intoxicated an entire village in Cana just to do a miracle.

No doubt someone would be wheeled out to talk about all the fighting after the wedding and how there was no water left to treat the fella who got amphora-d in a melee. They would dredge up his anger management difficulties. We were in fear of our lives say Temple Trader as Saviour in inverted commas runs amok in a rage.

And yes, Michael Collins couldn’t have become president. Well can you imagine how bitter that campaign would have been. He probably would still have been shot in Cork.

But as time went on, I warmed to the 20- and early-30-somethings that might want to become president and don’t forget, the referendum wasn’t about making it compulsory to have a 21-year old president.

We weren’t going to be ruled by a lad doing third year dairy science in DCU who was gone to the cinema in town with a few cans when he should have been at the Council of State. It was just allowing them to run.

And we know there’s no way a youngster would be elected in. (See earlier argument about how nasty the campaigns get here and add Instagram to the mix.)

IN any end, I voted yes. It was just um, you know, a bit of equality.

It didn’t pass. It felt like Ireland was saying — “not now okay, I’ve got so much on at the moment and I know it’s important honey but can we just prioritise?”

But I think they might run it again and maybe change the wording to: 'If you can be Taoiseach, you can be president. Now relax would ye. Age is just a number.'