It has been just over a year since voters resoundingly rejected two proposed amendments to the Constitution. While the Government and other institutions pushing them were temporarily chastened by defeat, the important question is whether they learned anything from the experience. It is not clear that they have.
While the phrase “durable relationships” helped to sink the proposed 39th Amendment, the response to the proposed 40th Amendment was even more visceral. Attempting to remove most of the references to “woman”, “mothers” and “home” from the Constitution and replace them with a convoluted wording that gave no rights to carers caused real anger. It was defeated by the largest No vote of any Irish referendum: 73.9 per cent.
Those campaigning for a Yes/Yes were shown to be completely and culpably out of touch with people’s needs. The provisions in Article 41 were presented as confining women to the home, which they never did. Instead, they acknowledged the value of work within the home, an arena many women feel they can no longer choose to prioritise.
In Census 1986, 653,398 women described their principal economic status as “looking after home/family.” In the recent CSO Report, Women in the Labour Market 2023-2024, only 208,200 women stated that they were primarily “engaged in home duties”.
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Generally speaking, women can participate in the paid workforce if they want to, even if the work is often precarious and “greedy”, in the Claudia Goldin sense of demanding more and more hours to be economically viable.
What younger women cannot do, quite often, is afford a home within reasonable distance of their family and sometimes their workplace. They are often trapped in a treadmill of early rising, bundling cranky children into the car for childcare (if they can find it) and school, working long hours, returning home, and then wrestling with tired and disgruntled offspring for an hour or two. Many women postpone their own much-needed sleep in a desperate attempt to have some time to themselves. The grind starts all over again the next day.
Working from home, while no panacea, at least cut out the commute. Now directives are being issued to return to the office. Meanwhile, Ireland’s birth rate is plummeting well below replacement levels but couples cannot see how they could possibly care for any more, or sometimes any, children.
Has anything changed for most people since the referendums were defeated? The Government has promised to keep the cost of childcare below €200 per child, a game-changer for many who were paying the equivalent of a second mortgage every month. However, it does nothing except increase the tax burden for married couples where one partner, usually the woman, opts to work full-time in the home for a few years.
[ Childcare crisis driving employees out of workforceOpens in new window ]
In April 2006, the then government introduced an Early Childcare Supplement (ECS), which recognised and was supposed to offset the costs associated with babies and young children. It peaked at €1,000 per child and then was abolished in 2009 as part of austerity measures. It was initially replaced by a free childcare year. Inadequate as the ECS was, many people used it to offset childcare costs, often to help pay a childminder or relative, which remains the preferred choice for the majority of mothers working outside the home.
Others used it to help with the loss of income that came with working in the home. Instead of reducing childcare costs, why not give choice back to parents in the form of a meaningful ECS payment?
The National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) continues to campaign for universal public childcare. According to a 2024 Amárach/Iona Institute Poll, which virtually replicated the results of a 2017 Amárach/Sudocrem poll, an astonishing 69 per cent of women declared that if finances allowed, they would like to be at home with their children. Over 70 per cent answered “not really or not at all” to a question asking whether they felt valued by society for their work as mothers.
[ Is free, publicly-funded childcare possible in Ireland?Opens in new window ]
NWCI is just as out of touch on this issue as it was on the two referendums. According to the McKenna judgment, no public money can be spent on advocating for only one side of a referendum. NWCI spent €50,000 on advocating Yes/Yes and while it states none of it was public money, to date it has failed to provide accounts detailing exactly where it came from, and says the precise figure of its expenditure will not be available until the organisation receives the final invoices. Other projects that might have benefited women were possibly foregone but again, there are no consequences.
Carers, at first glance, may have fared better. There were some improvements in the last budget – including an increase in the income disregard from July for the Carer’s Allowance from €450 to €625 for a single person, and from €900 to €1,250 for a couple. Self-employed people are now eligible for carer’s benefit. But we still have shamefully long waiting periods for virtually every therapeutic service needed by people with disabilities, including the elderly with additional needs.
It seems that the Government and those advocating a Yes/Yes have really learned very little at all.
