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Referendum carried by 57.4% Yes to 42.6% No.
The children's right referendum has been passed by a margin of 57.4 per cent to 42.6 per cent.
The proposed constitutional amendment looks at a number of areas of children’s rights including adoption, protection, State intervention in neglect cases and giving children a say in their own protection proceedings.
Scroll down for interactive map of results by constituency below, detailed table of constituency results, and live blog coverage.
More than 3.1 million people were eligible to vote, but the low-key campaign failed to capture the public imagination. The turnout was just 33.5 per cent.
Despite the low turnout, Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald said it was a “historic day” for children’s rights in Ireland.
Three of the 43 constituencies in the State voted No: Donegal North East, Donegal South West and Dublin North West.
Total votes: 1,066, 239
Invalid: 4,645
Valid: 1,061,594
Yes votes: 615,731 (57.4%)
No votes: 445,863 (42.6%)
Turnout: 33.5%
Map: results by constituency
(Click a constituency for detail)
The first constituency to report was Donegal South West, where 56.47 per cent voted No, as against 43.53 per cent in favour. Turnout was just 23.81 per cent. Donegal North East also voted No, by a margin of 59.66 per cent to 40.34 per cent.
Dublin North West was the third constituency in the State to vote No, albeit by a very slim margin of 50.39 per cent to 49.6 per cent.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny's constituency of Mayo voted by a margin of 53.01 per cent to 46.99 per cent in favour of the amendment.
In Tipperary South, where local TD Mattie McGrath was the only TD to publicly back a No vote, the referendum was carried by a margin of 54.17 per cent to 45.83 per cent. Turnout was 35.18 per cent. Tipperary North voted Yes.
The highest Yes vote was in Dublin South, where the referendum was carried by 73.03 per cent in favour. There were Yes votes of 71.87 per cent in Dublin South East and 71.57 per cent in Dun Laoghaire.
In Kildare North, the referendum was carried by 66.27 per cent in favour. There was also a strong Yes vote in Dublin North-Central, where 63.31 per cent were in favour. This constituency had a turnout of 42.03 per cent, which was the highest in the country, just ahead of Dún Laoghaire.
Galway East, Limerick and Limerick City passed the vote by about 60 per cent to 40 per cent.
Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore said he was “disappointed” with the turnout. He said a Saturday vote is something the Government “may have to look at”. He said the referendum “never took fire in terms of debate” and this may have resulted in people feeling it was a “foregone conclusion” .
Earlier, Ms Fitzgerald defended the decision to hold the vote on a Saturday, and hailed the result as a historic day for the protection of children in Ireland. On the subject of the low turnout, Ms Fitzgerald said she would have preferred if it had been higher but expressed delight that the referendum is likely to be passed.
Asked in Killarney last night about the low turnout, Mr Kenny said in some countries it was compulsory to vote. However, this was a democracy and people couldn’t be forced to vote, he said, adding that holding a referendum on a Saturday made little difference.
Live blog coverage
No campaigner Kathy Sinnott says the real losers are the children of Ireland and their parents "who have now lost their right to protect them". The former Munster MEP said she is worried for democracy because the State has lied and cheated and got away with it. She said the referendum is "contaminated" in her view.
There have been 36 referendums in the State’s history on issues ranging from abortion to bail, citizenship to the voting system. The record low turnout was in June 1979 when just 28.6 per cent voted in the referendums to change the adoption laws and the franchise for the Seanad university seats. The turnout in the fiscal treaty referendum last May was 50 per cent.
All political parties - both in Government and Opposition - had campaigned for a ‘Yes’ vote. Others supporting a ‘Yes’ vote include leading children’s charities the ISPCC, Barnardo’s, the Children’s Rights Alliance and lobby group Campaign for Children.
Proposed constitutional amendment:
Voters were asked to vote Yes or No to a proposal to include in the Constitution a new Article 42A and at the same time remove the current article 42.5.
The proposed new article reads as follows:
Children: Article 42A
1.The State recognises and affirms the natural and imprescriptible rights of all children and shall, as far as practicable, by its laws protect and vindicate those rights.
2. 1° In exceptional cases, where the parents, regardless of their marital status, fail in their duty towards their children, to such extent that the safety or welfare of any of their children is likely to be prejudicially affected, the State as guardian of the common good shall, by proportionate means as provided by law, endeavour to supply the place of the parents, but always with due regard for the natural and imprescriptible rights of the child.
2.° Provision shall be made by law for the adoption of any child where the parents have failed for such a period of time as may be prescribed by law in their duty towards the child and where the best interests of the child so require.
3. Provision shall be made by law for the voluntary placement for adoption and the adoption of any child.
4. 1° Provision shall be made by law that in the resolution of all proceedings –
i. brought by the State, as guardian of the common good, for the purpose of preventing the safety and welfare of any child from being prejudicially affected, or
ii. concerning the adoption, guardianship or custody of, or access to, any child, the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration.
2° Provision shall be made by law for securing, as far as practicable, that in all proceedings referred to in subsection 1° of this section in respect of any child who is capable of forming his or her own views, the views of the child shall be ascertained and given due weight having regard to the age and maturity of the child.
Polls opened this morning in the children’s rights referendum with the Government under pressure to explain the blunder in its information campaign which has led to confusion among the public.
More than 3.1 million people are eligible to cast their ballot with polling stations open until 10pm.
Voters will be asked a simple Yes or No, whether they agree with all the changes included in the 31st amendment of the Constitution. The proposed constitutional amendment looks at a number of areas of children’s rights including adoption, protection, State intervention in neglect cases and giving children a say in their own protection proceedings.
Documents that will be accepted as proof of identity at polling stations include passport, driving licence, employee identity card with a photo, student card issued, a travel document containing name and photograph, a bank or credit union deposit book.
Turnout is reported to be slow in many areas so far, prompting concerns it may be among the lowest in the history of the State. The low-key campaign may have failed to capture the public imagination and the choice of Saturday as polling day is something of an experiment.
There have been 36 referendums in the State’s history on issues ranging from abortion to bail, citizenship to the voting system. The lowest turnout was in 1979, when just 28.6 per cent of the electorate voted on changes to university representation in the Seanad and on adoption.
In Co Sligo, some areas reported turnout of as low as 3 per cent by noon, while in parts of Co Longford, it was only at 2 per cent. According to RTE News, parts of Dublin South West were only slightly higher at 3 per cent and 4 per cent.
RTE said there has been a turnout of up to 15 per cent in some parts of Cork, while over 12 per cent of people in Dublin Central have cast their ballots.
Counting of votes from the 43 constituencies begins at 9am tomorrow. Results will be fed through to the Referendum Returning Officer at Dublin Castle.
The first indications of the outcome should be known before lunchtime, unless the vote is split by a narrow margin.
Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar joined Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald yesterday in confirming that advice from the office of the Attorney General Máire Whelan had informed the content of booklets deemed flawed by the Supreme Court after they had been distributed to households across the State.
Mr Varadkar, Fine Gael’s director of elections for the referendum, appealed to voters not to use the referendum to punish the Government. “I really just hope that people going out to vote don’t use the fact that the Government made some mistakes here as a reason to vote No,” he said.
Yesterday, the Government was forced to take down its referendum website for a second time after the legal team behind the successful challenge in the Supreme Court warned it would apply to the court again to have it shut down.
The campaign website, childrensreferendum.ie, was removed on Thursday but a truncated version was later published. Lawyers representing Dublin engineer Mark McCrystal, who took the challenge, wrote to the Government demanding it be shut down.
All parties in the Dáil continued to call for a Yes vote, but Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin yesterday demanded a “full statement” from Taoiseach Enda Kenny to “clear the air” following the controversy.
However, the Yes side remains confident of victory. Non-political and cross-party supporters of the proposed constitutional amendment believe the ruling came too late in the campaign to substantially alter what polls have predicted will be a large gap between the Yes and No camps.
The Government was taken by surprise when the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday its booklet and website breached the McKenna judgment, after the High Court had last week dismissed a challenge to the spend of €1.1 million of public money on an information campaign. The landmark 2005 McKenna judgment held public money should not be spent to espouse a particular side in a referendum campaign.
Proposed constitutional amendment the wording
Voters are being asked to vote Yes or No to a proposal to include in the Constitution a new Article 42A and at the same time remove the current article 42.5.
The proposed new article reads as follows:
Children: Article 42A
1.The State recognises and affirms the natural and imprescriptible rights of all children and shall, as far as practicable, by its laws protect and vindicate those rights.
2. 1° In exceptional cases, where the parents, regardless of their marital status, fail in their duty towards their children, to such extent that the safety or welfare of any of their children is likely to be prejudicially affected, the State as guardian of the common good shall, by proportionate means as provided by law, endeavour to supply the place of the parents, but always with due regard for the natural and imprescriptible rights of the child.
2.° Provision shall be made by law for the adoption of any child where the parents have failed for such a period of time as may be prescribed by law in their duty towards the child and where the best interests of the child so require.
3. Provision shall be made by law for the voluntary placement for adoption and the adoption of any child.
4. 1° Provision shall be made by law that in the resolution of all proceedings –
i. brought by the State, as guardian of the common good, for the purpose of preventing the safety and welfare of any child from being prejudicially affected, or
ii. concerning the adoption, guardianship or custody of, or access to, any child, the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration.
2° Provision shall be made by law for securing, as far as practicable, that in all proceedings referred to in subsection 1° of this section in respect of any child who is capable of forming his or her own views, the views of the child shall be ascertained and given due weight having regard to the age and maturity of the child.
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