On Saturday, referendums aimed at modifying the constitutional definition of family and addressing the issue of care were resoundingly rebutted. The latter suffered an unprecedented margin of rejection. The government had suggested augmenting the family definition to acknowledge long-term relationships such as unmarried couples living together with their children. It had also proposed revising the reference to “women in the home” with terminology recognizing care within families.
As the counting of votes commenced at 9 am on Saturday across various centres in the country, evidence of impending defeat for the proposed changes became rapidly apparent. Initial results tallies indicated a public majority opposition to both proposals, leading the government to acknowledge defeat by the afternoon, although only one official result was declared.
Over 67% of voters were against the family amendment while nearly 74% turned down the proposed changes to care, thereby marking the greatest ever opposition vote in an Irish referendum. The national percentage of voter turnout was 44.3%, which is notably less than the 64% recorded in the preceding 2018 referendum on the change of Ireland’s abortion laws.
Dún Laoghaire was the solitary constituency in the State that supported either proposal, with 50.29% voting for the family amendment. However, the care amendment was declined in the same constituency, with a 57.79% opposition vote.
The highest opposition votes were in Co Donegal, with 80.2% and 84% voting against the family and care referendums, respectively. In Cavan-Monaghan, 78% of voters rejected the family amendment and 81% did the same for the care proposal.
In Laois-Offaly, both referendums met with significant opposition, with 75.71% rejecting the family amendment and 80% dismissing the care referendum.
In some Dublin constituencies, the family amendment was rejected by narrow margins. 50.35% and 50.60% of voters rejected the amendment in Dublin Bay South and Dublin-Rathdown, respectively.
In the family referendum, there were more than one million votes against, while fewer than half a million supported the amendment. There were 16,105 spoiled ballots.
During the care referendum, a substantial majority of 1,114,620 individuals rejected the proposal as opposed to the 393,053 voters who supported it. A total of 17,548 votes were deemed invalid. Prior to this, the most significant dissenting vote occurred in the 2015 age-reduction proposal for presidential candidates, which saw a 73.1% no vote.
Before the official announcement of the results at Dublin Castle, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar conceded that both amendments had been resoundingly defeated on a worthy voter turnout. The leader of Fine Gael acknowledged the double setback for the Coalition, dismissing the notion of a specific advantage or disadvantage for the government in winning or losing a referendum.
Peadar Tóibín, a Member of Parliament from Meath West, expressed surprise at the fact that Aontú, his party, was the only one campaigning against the proposal. He said that it appears that even the main opposition parties are no longer in touch with the public, and are not heeding public opinions.
Former Justice Minister and Attorney General, Senator Michael McDowell, who campaigned against the proposals, described the result as a firm rejection of, what he believes was, reckless social meddling with the Constitution.
Roderic O’Gorman, the Minister for Children, voiced his considerable disappointment at the result. He urged everyone to self-evaluate their campaign strategies and identify areas of improvement to better persuade voters in the future.
Sinn Féin leader, Mary Lou McDonald, assured that despite supporting a Yes-Yes vote and an initial promise to rerun the referendums upon defeat, the party would not be doing so following this result. She reassured the public that her party had heard their verdict loud and clear and would not seek to revisit the same questions.