Sarah Harte: We need legislation to repair issues and deficits — not more referenda

However, you don’t drop €23m without some level of reflection. The need to reflect has been repeatedly floated as reeling politicians turn on each other like rats and attempt to apportion blame.

What did we learn?

Terry Prone wrote in this newspaper that people were not confused, they didn’t want the referenda at all. She made the point that we were told that nothing practical would emerge from either referendum without further legislation so why bother?

On conceding defeat and coming out with his hands up the Taoiseach, taking responsibility for the failure (full square it must be said), agreed that people didn’t want the referenda.

A referendum is not always the answer

Referenda may not always be the solution when legislation is needed to repair issues and deficits.

If you have a Citizens' Assembly, then pay attention to the nuance of what they say.

Gen Z were not pouring into polling stations as they did for the abortion referendum. 

They did not connect with this referendum and perhaps do not vote if they don’t personally connect with an issue. 

The folk memory of why Irish people prize their vote in a relatively new State may be fading.

According to political scientist Theresa Reidy, about two-thirds of the electorate could be considered liberal, and yet we had a double no from nearly seven out of 10 voters.

Life is lived in grey areas

Ireland is not split into two binary groups as those on the yes side seem to imagine, the Catholic right, the far right, and social conservatives on one team, and the progressives, and liberals on the other team.

Newsflash folks: Plenty of us live life in the grey and hold nuanced views.

Not all of us who voted no want a continuation of the old Catholic orthodoxy where mothers stay at home, where the nuclear family is at the heart of society, and where gender roles are traditional. 

The arrogance and the myopia of the self-appointed liberals have been roundly punished, and at a high cost quite literally. 

It’s far too simplistic to attribute the no vote to a lack of information, apathy, and confusion. 

There were a lot of things going on beneath the surface. So take a long hard look at your assumptions.

Childcare and choices

Childcare and choices, for mothers, fathers, and families abled-bodied or not are at the heart of this referendum.

Ireland seems to spend between 0.3% to 0.4% of its GDP on childcare. The OECD average expenditure is around 0.8%. 

Unicef has recommended that 1% of GDP be invested in childcare. It’s over 1% in France; 1.6% in Sweden and 1.7% in Iceland. The figures speak for themselves. 

Families struggle to pay their childcare costs every month, single-parent families get waterboarded, many children live in needless poverty, and mothers get discouraged from working and drop out. 

Research last month found that 41% of parents have skipped meals to ensure their children have food, what does that tell you?

Stop rubbishing care

Stop rubbishing stay-at-home mothers, and those who engage in caring work for the sick and the elderly because it gets people’s backs up.

Some commentators on the yes side did this. 

Women who choose to stay at home are not antediluvian helpmeets.

 Caring work is crucial in any society and should be rewarded in all its forms. 

There are plenty of people who agree that we should aim for a society where fathers are supported to engage in care work and where gender roles are not prescribed, but they didn’t care for the tone that denigrated caring work and denied women’s outsized role in it. 

‘Mother’ is not a dirty word.

Women do the bulk of care work

Last Friday, at a networking event hosted by the Irish Examiner and PepsiCo for International Women’s Day, Esther N McCarthy, Life/Style editor at the newspaper, did a great job as host.

She pointed out that women attending the event to empower professional women and inspire inclusion probably had to negotiate childcare because the schools were closed. 

Cue nodding heads across the room because something that working women know all too well is the challenge presented when the schools are off or when a child gets sick.

Senator Tom Clonan is right

Senator Tom Clonan must be listened to on disability rights. We can agree that families have a duty of care to one another. 

Still, we must acknowledge it is no longer acceptable to continue treating around 22% of the Irish population as second-class citizens. 

This figure taken from the 2022 census screams at us that state planning must respond to disability and include support for independent living.

Language matters but action matters more

People want positive changes in the form of services and resources that boost them in their everyday lives and help them to lead more fulfilled existences. 

We are a wealthy country. We could choose to structure things differently. 

We need to have a long, hard look at countries with stronger family policies that emphasise the civic role of the state in facilitating the wellbeing of families and individual citizens. 

It would require a shift in thinking so that the social contract would mean giving financial security to families and individuals during times when they are burdened. 

Overall, it would mean supporting the reconciliation of work and family life and facilitating female workforce participation where women choose to work outside the home.

Measures might include state-backed affordable public and private daycare centres of high quality, egalitarian and flexible paid parental leave, pension credits for parental leave, parental benefits paid to a person who is close to a single parent and helps out, social insurance which covers people with disabilities so that they don’t have to beg for help or rely solely on their families.

We need a new Donogh O’Malley

The gap is wide open for a new political hero Donogh O’Malley style. 

The former Fianna Fáil politician provoked a social revolution by introducing free second-level education. 

Step right up whoever you are, you could be remembered for generations if you implemented some of the aforementioned measures.

We don’t want any more high-cost aspirational, badly thought-out rushed referenda. 

Still, a betting person would say that most of us would say yes to positive rights introduced through legislation that could change lives, increase our choices, and benefit society.

Now that would be a legacy.