Hypocritical...? Some people may call it that

FF TD Cowen weighs in on Chambers, his rival for an MEP seat

FIANNA Fáil TD Barry Cowen believes that some may deem his party colleague Senator Lisa Chambers to be ‘hypocritical’ in the wake of her Uturn on the referendums.

Ms Chambers is under political pressure after flip-flopping and contradicting her own position on last week’s votes.

On Sunday, Ms Chambers revealed that she voted No to both the family and care amendments to the Constitution – which were both heavily defeated.

On Tuesday, the Irish Daily Mail published images of Ms Chambers canvassing for a Yes-Yes vote in the ballots despite claiming not to have been involved in her party’s campaign.

Ms Chambers told the Mail that while she changed her mind in the final days of the campaign in relation to the care amendment, she would never have been able to support removing the word ‘mother’ from the Constitution.

‘I was never going to support that one when I looked at it and saw the word mother taken out,’ she said. However, the Mail revealed yesterday that Ms Chambers advocated for wording that would have removed ‘mother’ from the Constitution more than a year earlier.

She was a member of the crossparty Joint Committee on Gender Equality, established on foot of the Citizens’ Assembly, to examine issues such as the wording of the constitutional amendments. The committee, chaired by Labour leader Ivana Bacik, produced a report in November 2022 of its key findings including proposed wording for the care and family referendums. The wording in the report was not accepted by the Government but, crucially, also would have removed ‘mother’ from the Constitution. Speaking on the RTÉ’s News At One yesterday, Mr Cowen said he would not canvass the public to vote in a manner he did not intend to vote himself. ‘When I canvass for something, I usually, I always vote for it. But others may do differently,’ he said. Ms Chambers is running in the European elections for Fianna Fáil in the MidlandsNorth-West constituency

– alongside Mr Cowen.

Asked if Ms Chambers’s actions were hypocritical, Mr Cowen responded that ‘some may call it that’, but said people are entitled to change their mind. ‘I wouldn’t say she misled voters… she has explained it herself in her own way,’ he said.

Asked for his views on four of his Fianna Fáil colleagues announcing after the vote that they went against the party position, Mr Cowen said he believed they should have told the public before polling day. ‘They want it known to their constituents that they voted No, that’s fine... I personally think it would have been better if they informed the electorate before the vote and rather than after,’ he said.

Mr Cowen outlined several reasons why he believed the referendums failed.

He pointed to the Government rejecting the wording proposed by the Citizens’ Assembly and the special Oireachtas committee. Mr Cowen also pointed to the guillotining of the legislation as it passed through the Dáil and the Seanad.

Ms Chambers, as Leader of the Seanad, was responsible for introducing the legislative guillotine which stops debate on the Bill. Despite several senators privately calling Ms Chambers’s continuation as Seanad Leader into question, Mr Cowen said he did not believe she would be removed from the role.

‘No, I don’t believe so [that her position is untenable]… that’s a matter for Government but I expect her to retain the position,’ he commented.

‘Others may do differently’