Counting the cost

The Government expended a significant amount of its rapidly diminishing political capital in pursuit of what most legal experts agree is a rather limited amendment, says Conor O’Mahony

THE saying goes that you learn from your mistakes; if this is true, then we should hope that the political establishment will be considerably wiser after the children’s referendum.

In the end, the proposal to insert a new article on children into the Constitution was carried, but the result has come against a backdrop of extremely low voter turnout, high levels of misinformation during the campaign, and a Supreme Court decision finding that the Government spent €1.1m on an information campaign that was in breach of constitutional principles.