Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said today that the Irish government was defeated in a double referendum on changing the constitution, in which the citizens voted that they did not want to change the part of it that, among other things, says that women have a place in the home.
Varadkar announced that according to the first results, it is clear that the citizens voted against the proposed changes to the constitution in the referendums, the Associated Press reports.
Yesterday, on International Women's Day, two referendums were held in Ireland, in one of which citizens declared whether they were in favor of removing the definition according to which marriage is "the basis on which the family is based" and whether they wanted to delete the part of the constitution in which it says that women have a place in the house.
"Our responsibility was to convince the majority of people to vote 'yes' and we clearly failed to do that," Varadkar said.
The Irish government campaigned for citizens to vote 'yes' in both referendums, arguing that the changes would remove sexist language and pass family protections.
Opponents argued that the wording of the changes was ill-conceived, an argument that appeared to gain traction in the final days of the campaign.
The victory of the option "for" changing the constitution was considered possible, because polls conducted before the referendum showed that the majority of citizens wanted the mentioned changes.
However, during the entire voting day, a low turnout was recorded, and in some parts less than 30 percent of registered voters turned out.
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