International Women's Day: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-04 ============================================================ Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland I thank the Leader for arranging a debate on International Women's Day, even though the day itself will be next week. Due to the St. Patrick's Festival, we are considering it today. My mind goes back two years to 8 March 2024. That was the occasion chosen specially for two referendums to amend the Constitution. One of them was to introduce the concept of "durable relationship", in addition to marriage, as the basis for the family, and the other was to introduce a new provision in the Constitution in relation to care. Those two referendums were defeated decisively by the Irish people. I have a few comments to make on the referendums in retrospect. We may have forgotten what happened in the course of the referendum campaigns. First, the Referendum Commission failed abysmally to explain what the referendum changes would mean. The chair of the commission, when asked what the term "durable relationship" meant, said she could not advance any real definition but said you would know a durable relationship if you got a wedding invitation or a Christmas card addressed to you jointly. The Minister in charge told the Irish people solemnly that the definition of "durable relationship" would be left to the courts and that he himself would offer no definition as to what it meant. However, he gave the assurance that the term was not the same as the term "durable relationship" when used in European law. When those who could see there were clear implications for family law, succession law, taxation law, immigration law and pensions law, among others, sought from the Irish people's Government some indication of the analysis done by the various Departments of State as to what the implications of the constitutional changes in relation to the nature of the family would mean, by means of freedom of information requests, the Departments in question refused to answer. The excuse given was that the people had yet to make up their mind on the issue. Can you imagine not being able to find out the consequences until you make up your mind? One Minister of the then Government after another came before cameras and microphones and declared solemnly that they had legal advice that there would be no significant changes arising from the "durable relationship" clause. It transpired that all the information and misinformation was false. It transpired after the event that various Departments had pointed out to the Department of Finance and various other Departments of State, including the Department of Justice, that there would be very significant implications to introducing the notion of "durable relationship" at the same status as marriage. It was pointed out that there would be very significant implications in relation to disputes as to who was entitled to succeed in succession cases, who was entitled to come here on a family reunion basis under immigration law, who was to be regarded as the partner under pension law, and which family arrangements would attract taxation protections and allowances. Right across the board, the Irish people were systematically deceived by the then Government. There is no other description of what happened. The relevant Minister had been warned that there were very serious implications for our society if the referendum was carried. Worst of all was that the Referendum Commission, not content with talking nonsense about Christmas cards and wedding invitations, actually told the Irish people the article in the Constitution about women not being obliged to work outside the home due to economic necessity had never been considered by the courts to any significant degree. That was blatantly untrue. There was case law that showed that the Supreme Court had invoked it to protect women whose marriages were breaking up from being forced out to work by husbands who said they were well capable of working instead of looking after the family. The litany of untruths that was perpetrated on the Irish people at that stage, combined with the extraordinarily dishonest arrogance of saying people's right to know what Departments were warning the Government about would be postponed until after the referendum itself was completed, was perpetrated by a Government that had the arrogance to say it was important to make these changes on International Women's Day. I am no expert on it but I believe that the great majority of women came out against it because they could see through it and saw it was a nonsense. The care referendum was put forward as somehow conferring some status on people who were caring for disabled people within the family. It was deliberately concealed from the Irish people that the wording of that referendum had been deliberately changed from earlier drafts in order to make it absolutely clear that no person could rely on the proposed new article for relief in the courts so that those who were caring would not have justiciable rights under that particular article. The then Taoiseach wrote an article in the Irish Independent saying that he accepted the wisdom of the people. That was Leo Varadkar. He then left Ireland for St. Patrick's Day in New York. Within a week, he was gone. He gave a press conference in Government Buildings. However, nobody has ever apologised to the Irish people for the wrongs that were done to them. I will finish on this point. Nobody ever said the people were deceived, they should have had the information, the Electoral Commission was wrong and Ministers who said that this would make no difference were all wrong. I am standing up here today, two years after International Women's Day was chosen cynically as the date on which these two referendums were to be enacted by the people, to say that the mere fact that the then Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, resigned and the mere fact there was a change in some of the Ministries does not justify the wrong that was done to the Irish people and the deliberate effort that was made to pervert democracy by misinforming and starving the people of information to which they were entitled. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-03-04/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:43+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-04