The Divorce Referendum has been passed overwhelmingly by the Irish people, with 82.1% voting in favour, and only 17.9% voting against. Some commentators have remarked that this is a "huge cultural shift" in Irish society given that the cou…
The Divorce Referendum has been passed overwhelmingly by the Irish people, with 82.1% voting in favour, and only 17.9% voting against. Some commentators have remarked that this is a "huge cultural shift" in Irish society given that the country only narrowly voted to introduce divorce back in 1995 when 50.28% voted "Yes" and 49.72% voted "No". It only goes to show that modern Ireland is now at peak liberalism.
The highest "Yes" vote in the 2019 Divorce Referendum was in the Dublin constituency of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, where 86.7% voted in favour of the proposal followed by Fingal which was on 86.4%.
The highest "No" vote was in Monaghan where 24.96% voted against the proposal followed by Leitrim where the "No" vote was 23.59%.
Turnout nationally was 50.83%.
Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Josepha Madigan, who was the Fine Gael Director of Elections for the Referendum, had earlier said she was surprised by the extent of the vote but not by the "kindness and compassion" of the Irish people.
She said the vote reflected that people felt compassion had to be shown to those going through marital breakdown and that the four-year wait was too long.
"This was not about rocking the system, it was about humanising the system," she said.
The referendum proposed two changes to the restrictions on divorce which are currently written into the constitution. It will remove from the Constitution the requirement for couples to be living apart for four years before qualifying for a divorce. Instead it will now be a matter for which the Oireachtas will legislate.
The Government has indicated it will reduce the time period through legislation to two years by amending the Family Law (Divorce) Act of 1996 which up to now contained the same provisions as the Constitution. Because the current four-year period was written in to the Constitution, it could only be changed by a referendum.
The second change will make it easier for foreign divorces to the recognised...
