No need to green-light ¤17m referendum folly
THIS day next week, we’ll have the results of the twin referendum.
Yet there’s very little enthusiasm for the first such national vote since 2017.
That’s probably because everyone knows the whole thing is a steaming pile of bollockology.
Let’s look at the first vote – what’s being called the referendum on “care”.
We’re being asked to erase this pledge from the Constitution: “The State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.
“Therefore, it shall endeavour to ensure mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.”
Why would anyone take this out?
It’s an official acknowledgement in our fundamental legal document of the most important job in the world, one mostly done by women: raising the next generation.
The other one – on “family” – is a misfire.
It could have been an opportunity for inclusion but messed up with incoherent language.
For reasons best known to themselves, the Government is pushing ahead with these pointless referendums costing €17million that nobody normal
wants, needs, or asked for. The more you read into the proposals, the more it becomes clear that voting Yes to this folly would cause more problems than it would solve.
But that’s what happens when Fine Gael is in charge – as the late politician John Kelly once said, they can’t walk past a sleeping dog without feeling the need to give it a kick.
In the family vote, we are being asked to broaden its definition to include those in “durable relationships”.
So what does that mean? Nobody knows. Trying to define it is akin to nailing jelly to the wall.
It’s everything and nothing. Single parents are being patronised by a campaign to convince them it will finally give them official status as a family.
As a single mother myself for 13 years, I never needed such validation and was far too busy to grievance-seek for omissions in the Constitution.
The truth is, me and my son were always a family and being re-categorised as a “durable relationship” is a downgrade of the familial mother-child bond.
I noticed plenty of prejudice against us in society, plenty of economic challenges, but never experienced any obstacles to our family status from Article 41.
The summing up of this particular piece of fudgy nonsense came from one cheeky Twitter post that read: “What is NOT a durable relationship?
“Because it’s starting to sound like I had one with my favourite sock when I was 14.”
The whole vote on March 8 is a charade to look progressive, to distract from real things, like how nobody can afford a house.
This referendum is anything but “progressive”.
Instead it is an insult to women, a dismissal of carers, and segregates single-parent families.
Possibly worse again, the supposed Opposition is lazily agreeing with them.
It was rushed in to be held on International Women’s Day as some kind of gimmick to grab the gullible female vote.
But ask anyone in the street and they’ll tell you they don’t fully know what it’s all about, or why they should vote one way or the other.
As a result, it’s hard to predict whether it will be a Yes or a No, it seems to be as random as picking the winner of the Grand National.
The only argument for voting Yes is that it would be a symbolic gesture; or to indulge the emotional reasoning of those who see offence in everything.
Yet there is endless rationale to Vote No.