The government has made a mess of the referendum. They want to look ‘progressive’ but keep the neoliberal ethos that is at the heart of the Irish state. This is why Leo Varadkar stated that there should be no social rights in the Irish constitution.
Article 42.1.1 of the Irish constitution is obnoxious. The 1937 constitution was drafted with the help of a committee of Jesuits and the extreme right-wing Bishop, John Charles McQuaid. Writing about the infamous ‘women in the home’ clause, he noted that ‘They (feminists) seem stung by the suggestion that the normal place for a woman is the home… Quadragesimo Anno” answers them.’ His reference was to a Papal Encyclical which stated that “mothers will above all devote their work to the home and the things connected with it”
So Article 42.1.1 is borrowed almost word for word from this Catholic Encyclical.
No wonder the Bishops had a missive read out at every church urging people to keep it. These are the same people, who still control 96% of our primary schools and use it to appoint teachers who must follow their ‘ethos’
But instead of just deleting the article or replacing it with a recommendation from the Citizen’s Assembly, the government brushed aside all proposed wordings from parties like People Before Profit and inserted a clause that has two major problems.
First, it says the state will ‘strive to’ support carers. But it means nothing. You can ‘strive to’ lose weight and not shed a pound.
Second, it insists that care is given within the family and does not give any social rights to carers and disabled persons.
This is why there is such a difference of opinion on the left on how one should vote.
But one positive outcome is that a conversation has now really started about carer and disability rights.
Whatever the outcome of the referendum on Friday, this needs to continue and develop into a major fight.
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On Tuesday March 12th there will be a protest outside Leinster House between 12pm-2pm to call for the scrapping of the Green Paper which wants to allocate disabled people into different tiers of capacity.
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Inside the Dáil, People Before Profit will be pushing for a new referendum – whatever the outcome of this one – to insert into the constitution new articles that give social rights to carers and people with disability.
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In the immediate term, we need legislative changes to implement the UNCRPD which was passed in 2007, agreed by Ireland in 2018, and left sitting there for years because the state will not give disabled people social rights.