Leo Varadkar has said that since the landslide defeat of the Family and Care votes last year, Irish politicians are now “afraid” to hold new referendums, because they don’t want the “hassle and embarrassment” of losing.
Speaking during an on-stage interview with Virgin Media’s Gavan Reilly at the Mansion House on Sunday, the former Taoiseach said that the Government had already postponed the Unified Patent Court referendum out of fear of defeat, with no other votes currently planned.
VARADKAR “FEARS” THAT THERE ARE “NO REFERENDUMS PLANNED AT THE MOMENT”
“One fear I would have about the defeat of those two referendums is…the fact that the patent court referendum has been postponed and there are no referendums planned at the moment that I’m aware of,” Varadkar said.
“You know, it’s possible Simon Harris and Micheál Martin together will serve nearly six or seven years in office without a single referendum, whereas Enda had seven, I had five. Cowen and others had several referendums.”
Varadkar said he hoped to be proven wrong but believed that the results had already deterred government action.
“A CONSTITUTION THAT WAS WRITTEN IN 1937 IS PRETTY OUT OF DATE AT THIS STAGE”
“I know it’s a technical thing, but this is a European court that is up and running, and almost every other European country has signed up to it, and we can’t participate because of the fear of losing a referendum. And I think that’s unfortunate for our country,” he said.
“Like, we shouldn’t do constitutional changes just for the sake of it. But, you know, a constitution that was written in 1937 is pretty out of date at this stage, and, you know, there are constitutional changes that I think should be made, and I think there is going to be a fear.”
FAMILY AND CARE REFERENDUMS FAILED DUE TO CRITIQUES FROM BOTH RIGHT AND LEFT
Varadkar said that different groups opposed the referendums for different reasons, with objections coming both from the right and from the left.
“There are people who didn’t like the idea of the word ‘mother’ being taken out of the constitution. I get that. They were coming from, perhaps, a more conservative or rightwing perspective,” he said.
“[One voter at Dublin Castle] opposed the referendum, as a lot of people did, like Tom Clonan for example, more from a Leftwing perspective, that this didn’t go far enough. That this was just about family carers, but that it was blind to the people who received the care – the people with disabilities.”
FUTURE REFERENDUMS NOW “LESS LIKELY” BECAUSE GOVERNMENT’S ARE “AFRAID OF HASSLE AND EMBARRASSMENT”
Varadkar recalled speaking to that woman on the day of the count, and telling her that future referendums on issues like housing were now “less likely” because “governments are just afraid of the hassle and embarrassment of being defeated in a referendum.”
“She said to me, ‘You know, you lost because you didn’t listen to us, people with disabilities. You’re afraid to give us more rights, and if we got more rights, then other things might happen, you know, like a right to housing or something like that.'”
“I told her, ‘I hear what you’re saying, but my fear actually was the reverse.’ You know, I saw this as progress. The wording that is there isn’t good – this is better. And we might have further referendums about social rights into the future, and actually potentially the results knocked that back.”
He added: “I think it’s now less likely that we’ll have a referendum on the right to housing or disability rights or so on, because governments are just afraid of the hassle and embarrassment of being defeated in a referendum.”
TWO WEEKS AFTER THE REFERENDUM, “PEOPLE HAD ALMOST FORGOTTEN ABOUT IT”, VARADKAR CLAIMS
Earlier in the exchange, Varadkar had said that the defeats were not the final straw in his decision to step down, which had already been made before polling day.
He said that two weeks after the referendum, “people had almost forgotten about it.”
“That wasn’t the last straw,” he said.
“Nobody was calling for my resignation – at least nobody in politics, nobody in my party. And that’s part of the reason why it was a surprise. Because, as is often the case, two weeks later people had almost forgotten about it,” he said.
VARADKAR STAYED ON AS TAOISEACH LONGER THAN HE WANTED TO SEE OUT THE REFERENDUMS
He explained that he had intended to leave office earlier, but remained in place through the votes to avoid causing instability.
“A decision was made that I was going to step down anyway long before the referendums. If anything, I kind of stayed around a bit longer before the referendums because they didn’t want to step down and cause a leadership contest during the referendums,” he said.
“There’s a meeting of the Fine Gael Party first thing in the new year and I would have used that as my opportunity to announce and then they could have had a new year before the referendums. But, you know, slightly speaking against myself, in some ways the referendums going as badly as they did helped to cement the fact that I was going to go.”
“I DID WIN THE BIG [REFERENDUMS], THE ONES THAT MATTERED THE MOST”
He added that governments had often lost referendums in the past, and that he had “won” the most important referendums in his career – namely, the abortion referendum, same sex marriage referendum, and one to abolish blasphemy from the Constitution.
“You know, like I did win the big ones, the ones that mattered the most,” Varadkar said.
“I won, I think, three out of five, and they were, you know, some of the most significant ones. And then, obviously, referendums as well when I was a minister. You know, governments lose referendums. Brian Cowen and Bertie Ahern lost very important European referendums that had to be rerun.”
He continued: “So it’s like, one fear I would have about the defeat of those two referendums is…that the defeat of those two referendums has scared off the government about making any constitutional changes.”
PLANNED REFERENDUMS POSTPONED
The Family and Care referendums, held on International Women’s Day 2024, were rejected by significant margins. The results represented two of the heaviest defeats ever for government-backed constitutional amendments.
At the time, the Government said it was considering a referendum on the right to housing, as well as one on extending voting rights in presidential elections to Irish citizens living abroad. Sinn Féin had also called for both to be prioritised.
The referendum on the Unified Patent Court, which would see Ireland join a European-wide court to adjudicate patent disputes, was initially due to take place alongside the European and local elections in June 2024. It was later delayed, with then-Taoiseach Simon Harris saying the issue was too complex to put to the people at that point.