History in the baking
warm weather brings out public to have their say on repealing the eighth
A COMBINATION of warm weather and an engaged electorate ensured turnout for yesterday’s referendum vote was high.
People from all walks of Irish life made their way to the polling booths to have their say on the Eighth Amendment.
But even this Irish Mirror reporter was bowled over by the scenes in South Dublin early yesterday morning.
The electorate coming out of all the polling stations visited – Ringsend, Pearse Street, Baggott Street and Shelbourne Road – was a good mix and it was exactly what I wanted – some young, some old, Yes and No voters, students, a mother and daughter, an old man who used to be a No voter but recently changed to Yes.
As I stood outside the polling station in Ballsbridge College of Further Education I’d got a great cross-section of the community – all that I was missing was a nun, myself and a colleague joked.
Well, if ever the old adage proved fitting it was yesterday. You wait an hour for a bus and all of a sudden two come along at once.
Except on this occasion it was a nun and it wasn’t two, but five.
They were the stereotypical nuns – graceful, elderly ladies, in full habit, some clutching rosary beads and a pair requiring walking sticks to ascend the two or three steps into the polling station. They were dignified and silent as they passed us and a man helping them told me they didn’t want to speak to a member of the media.
They passed slowly and were guided around the side of the post office beside the polling station to waiting transport – and then they were gone, back to their prayer and dedication.
A friend of the nuns who was standing by told me they were members of the Poor Clares order and they had come down specially from their residence just around the corner on Simmonscourt Road.
They are greatly respected in the area and their presence summed up nicely the impressive turnout for this referendum.
These ladies rarely venture outside their cloistered quarters, but chose to do so yesterday because they believed it was important their voice was heard on this most contentious of
issues. It’s safe to assume they voted No. The beautiful sunny day in Dublin ensured voters were in good form.
In fact nobody had any complaints about being pestered by a journalist after they came out of the polling booths. Those old enough to remember 1983 when the Eighth Amendment was inserted into the Constitution told me it was very different back then.
Mary Stanley from Dublin was voting with her daughter Sophie Higel and both said Yes.
Ms Stanley revealed it was “a joy” to choose Yes compared to the pressure she felt as a pro-choice female voter last time.
Daragh Cassells from the innercity, in his mid-to-late 40s, stopped to speak after voting Yes in the polling station at Catherine Mcauley Primary School on Baggott Street.
He said he didn’t have the vote in 1983, but he would have come from a No household and would have gone along with what his parents suggested.
He said his abiding memory was of strange metal coin-size badges the pro-life side had back then. He and his teenage friends thought they were so cool they were worth collecting.
It was only later he realised the “cool” insignia was in fact a lifesize picture of a foetus’ legs at 12 weeks’ gestation.
They say the past is a different country.
The Ireland that voted yesterday was most certainly a much changed place to the one of 35 years ago.
The result of the referendum, when it is announced today, will reveal just how different it has become.