It was sure to be the "opening of the floodgates", we were warned, the beginning of the end of marriage itself. The referendum to legalise divorce – 20 years ago today – would not just recognise the reality of marital breakdown and free those trapped in broken relationships, as its supporters claimed, but allegedly encourage it and promote a culture in which marriage was demeaned and undermined. A familiar refrain, the "slippery slope" reasoning deployed again and again in the referendum debates on abortion, neutrality, marriage equality ...
Case not proven, however. There were 2.1 million marriages and 986,000 divorces in the EU in 2011, according to the most recent figures available for the union as a whole. The Irish, with roughly the same marriage rate as the EU average, sought divorces at only one third of the average European rate (0.6 to 2.0 per 1,000 respectively). Moreover, Ireland’s divorce rate, the lowest in Europe, has barely changed since legislation allowed the practice in 1996.
Comparisons are difficult – such statistics only give us a scale of magnitude. The divorce rate in each state reflects differing changing social attitudes to marriage and the family – and unlike Latvia where the marriage rate, like the European average, has halved since 1960 – Irish marriage is barely down a fifth in the same period, though couples are waiting much longer to tie the knot.
The argument that divorce has undermined the institution of marriage is simply not borne out and, moreover, according to academics, marital breakdown is anyway estimated at double the divorce rate. The rate of divorce, as distinct from marital breakdown, is also a function of how difficult and costly divorce is. Our two-tier system, requiring prolonged separation – four out of five previous years – perhaps needs to be reviewed in cases of obvious irretrievable breakdown.
Divorce was approved here by the narrowest of margins at the second attempt. In 1995 it garnered 50.3 per cent of Yes votes, while nearly a decade beforehand, in 1986, the No vote took a strong 63.5 per cent. The difference was made by a range of changes, in social attitudes generally, but also because the government made clear precisely what legislative provisions would follow a Yes vote. You knew what you were voting for.
Above all there was a growing understanding and concern that, right or wrong, the painful reality of marital breakdown was widespread, touching most families in some way. And that the purpose of legislation and constitutions was not to set unrealisable moral standards, but to reflect real social practice and to manage in a humane way the inevitability of human imperfection. It was a decent, welcome, and, yes, Christian appreciation of the role of law; a turning point which has transformed our approaches since then to the other great moral debates of our time.