I want a No-No next week and we will prevail
McDowell says changes are ‘unnecessary’
THE proposed amendments to the Constitution will be decisively defeated by a margin of 20%, Senator Michael McDowell predicts. The former attorney general and former justice minister made the remarks as he launched a new Lawyers For No campaign ahead of next week’s referendum, on Friday, March 8. The Lawyers For No group, with around 10 members, have raised concerns about inserting wording on ‘durable’ relationships and on removing a reference to mothers’ duties in the home. The family amendment proposes extending the meaning of family beyond one defined by marriage to include those based on ‘durable’ relationships. The care amendment proposes deleting references to a woman’s roles and duties in the home, and replace it with a new article that acknowledges family carers. Mr McDowell said he believes there would be a ‘decisive’ 6040 defeat of both referendums. Mr McDowell claimed there was an ‘implied threat’ of a loss of funding for NGOs by Children’s Minister Roderic
O’Gorman when he said that ‘progressive’ NGOs would have to state why they would not be campaigning for the amendments.
A spokesman for Mr O’Gorman rejected Mr McDowell’s claims.
He said: ‘The minister rejects the comments by Senator McDowell absolutely. It is notable that Sen McDowell is making baseless accusations rather than explaining why he believes thousands of one-parent families should remain excluded from Constitutional recognition, which will be the result of a No vote.’
Leading the concerns on behalf of the Lawyers For No group, Mr McDowell said extending the meaning of family to durable relationships is ‘unnecessary’ and ‘introduces huge uncertainty into our fundamental law’.
He said that requests to define ‘durable’ get ‘confused, halfexplanations’, some of which are ‘mutually contradictory’.
He said it is ‘unnecessary’ to extend the meaning of family in the Constitution to other durable relationships as ‘we’re of the view that there is nothing that a single parent or a de-facto cohabiting couple cannot be given by statute’.
He said that during a Seanad debate, an amendment was put down proposing to define ‘durable’ based on those decided by the Oireachtas and designated by law.
‘If you think that by widening the definition of family, you’re simply engaging in some broad brush, gestural amendment of the
Constitution, you have another think coming, because every single word that’s in the Constitution, and that’s been taken out of the Constitution, will be parsed and analysed by all the courts in the future.’
He said Mr O’Gorman had argued this would create a ‘differential approach’ between families.
‘The door will be open to what we call concurrent or successive families with multiple partners common to each,’ he said. ‘Can a male partner be “the man” in two families at the same time and can somebody leave a durable relationship and then get married in circumstances that leave effectively two families in existence?’
On the care amendment, Mr McDowell said labelling it the ‘women in the home’ amendment is a ‘deliberate distortion’ and said the new article on care is ‘utterly toothless’.
The current wording recognises that ‘by her life within the home’ woman supports the State, and that ‘mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home’. The proposed wording is that the State ‘shall strive to support’ the provision of care by family members.
‘I call it the gender agenda, to remove all gender from statutes and Bills and the like and just to deal with people as if women and motherhood was just another thing that happens to persons and to take away the value the Constitution gives them,’ he said.
‘I call it the gender agenda’