A referendum to rid the constitution of a clause saying that a woman’s place is in the home could fail, according to a new Sunday Times poll.
Just 41% of respondents in the Behaviour & Attitudes survey said they would vote in favour of removing article 41.2.1 from Bunreacht na hEireann, while 39% said they would vote against repealing it. One in five said they did not know how they would vote. More men (42%) would support its removal than women (40%).
Josepha Madigan, a Fine Gael TD who has called for a referendum to remove the clause, said the poll finding was surprising, and it showed an information campaign would be necessary before any poll is held.
“There must be a misconception about what it would actually mean,” said Madigan, a family-law solicitor. “It might be that home-makers, who are mostly women, would be afraid of being forced out to the labour force if they voted for it. Nobody is saying that. If you take it out of the constitution, you do not have to go out to work.”
Article 41.2.1 says: “The state recognises that, by her life within the home, woman gives to the state a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.” It says the state shall “endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home”.
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Older voters are more resistant to dropping the constitutional clause, with 46% of those aged over 54 saying they would vote no, compared with 33% of those aged under 35.
Better-off ABC1 voters (42%) were more enthusiastic about abolition than farmers (35%), while voters in Connacht and Ulster were the least enthusiastic, with 44% saying they would vote no.
In Dublin, 54% of voters gave it the thumbs-up. Green Party supporters (62%) registered the highest approval and people who voted for independents the lowest at 35%, just ahead of Fianna Fail at 36%.
Support on the “yes” side is generally much higher before referendums are called. This is regarded as desirable, because support for “yes” often ebbs away during referendum campaigns, when other issues, such as satisfaction with the government, begin to feature in the debate.
In February 2013, 88% of members of the Constitutional Convention voted in favour of amending the article, and recommended the government call a referendum on it.
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Only 12% of the convention’s delegates favoured its abolition, however. In a separate vote, 98% preferred altering the article to make it gender-balanced and to acknowledge the importance of other carers in the home.
“I don’t think people would have a difficulty with that, because there are increasingly more men in the home than there used to be,” said Madigan, who chairs the Dail’s budgetary oversight committee.
In the event of a referendum on removing an article on blasphemy from the constitution, 54% said they would support it and 22% said there were opposed. The “don’t knows” were 24%.
The Social Democrats published two Dail bills on blasphemy last Wednesday. One provides for a referendum to repeal the provision in the constitution and the other to remove the offence of blasphemy from the statute book.
Ireland’s constitutional ban on blasphemy made international headlines this year after a complaint was made to gardai about English actor Stephen Fry describing God as “capricious, mean-minded and stupid” on an RTE television programme, The Meaning of Life, hosted by Gay Byrne.
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The poll found almost equal support for repealing blasphemy among women (54%) and men (53%). The difference was more stark between higher-income ABC1 voters, with 59% saying they favoured it, and farmers, at 44%.
A proposed referendum to give emigrants the vote in presidential elections won the biggest support in the poll. Some 63% are in favour, 21% opposed, and just 10% said they did not know.
Younger voters were the least enthusiastic, with 66% of those under 35 saying they would back the idea, compared with 70% of those aged 35-54.
During his St Patrick’s Day visit to America in March, while he was still the taoiseach, Enda Kenny said that the cabinet had decided to go ahead with a referendum to allow emigrants to vote for the president.