Magdalene

• Another chapter in that history has played out in the form of resounding defeats for two government proposals aimed at modernising the constitution.
• One sought to remove a reference to a “woman’s” life “within the home” and recognise the value of “care” provided to others within the home.
• Referendums were usually just a procedural requirement, imposed by the constitution, for making certain types of legal changes.

The ‘post-crash referendums’

• Amid a national crisis of confidence, following a crash of historic proportions, a degree of soul-searching was in evidence.
• Themes of rebirth and renewal came to prominence within what was historically a conservative (and very stable) political system.
• A series of high-profile disputes between the church and the state followed over the country’s reckoning with this legacy.
• Beginning in around 2012, referendums came to be used as part of a distinctive project of constitutional modernisation.
• The blasphemy referendum removed an arcane criminal offence which some regarded as having been effectively impossible to prosecute anyway.

End of an era

• Again, this was understood as liberalising and modernising a constitutional framework where only traditional marital families were given constitutional recognition.
• These referendums showed the limits of the project of constitutional liberalisation that has been conducted since the great recession.
• It seems unlikely that the problem lay in this liberalisation “going too far”, or in a decisive conservative shift in public opinion.
• These referendum defeats are therefore likely to draw a line under a recent pattern of symbolic and “expressive” referendum use in Ireland.

Eoin Daly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.