Despite all opinion polls to date having indicated a pretty substantial approval rate for the two proposals to change the Constitution by referendum on March 8, the political establishment appear to be working themselves into a bit of a frenzy over even the prospect of 20% or 25% dissension from the Party Line.
There is a strong implication that questioning of any establishment narrative – in this case the one guiding the referendum changes – is potentially subversive or sinister.
Gript reported on Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald’s pledge to re-run the referendums if the proposal is defeated. Mary Lou had not yet joined Sinn Féin, as far as I recall, when Sinn Féin along with pro life and groups who regarded the Nice Treaty as a threat to national sovereignty helped to have it defeated in 2002.
Of course, the state simply ignored that, and held another one in 2002 which returned the correct result. Mary Lou certainly was in Sinn Féin in 2009 when the very same happened after the defeat by the electorate of the Lisbon Treaty on the first time of asking in 2008, only for it too to be re-run and approved. Clearly, Sinn Féin do not do irony.
Nor does the state and all of the political parties and NGOs and, lets be honest here, the mainstream media. Some pundits have lost the plot over an Elon Musk retweet of a call by Conor McGregor for a No vote. They would appear to have developed a severe case of amnesia regarding the external assistance given to not only the actual campaigns for same sex marriage and abortion, but for the preparation and push for the referendums on those issues to be even held.
The corporate funders of those campaigns openly boasted about their pushing of the referendums. In its own account of how Atlantic Philanthropies operated in Ireland, it referred to its role in pushing for same sex marriage. The Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN) alone received $4.7 million from Atlantic which clearly regarded that campaign as the template for “others seeking progressive change.”
How the similar drive to legalise abortion on demand was funded and orchestrated was identified by the pro-life movement here in the years leading to the decision to hold a referendum to do away with the constitutional protection of the life of the unborn that had been approved in the 8th amendment.
Although the referendum was not announced until 2018, in 2012 Niamh Uí Bhriain identified how funding from the Atlantic Philanthropies in particular was pump-priming the groups that were at the centre of the powerful lobby demanding that the 8th amendment be repealed.
The Life Institute estimated in 2015 that $18 million had been granted to key Irish groups including the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), Amnesty International Ireland, and the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI).
SPENDING PUBLIC FUNDS ON CAMPAIGNS?
The coordinating group for the pro-abortion campaign was Together for Yes, which is still in existence, and many of its personnel have put their shoulders behind the wheel of the current YesYes Campaign.
The most recent published accounts for TFY, for 2022, show a rather modest return with a deficit for the year of €5,449. It is certainly a far cry from the heady days of 2018 when Together for Yes claimed to have raised €1.64 million by June 6 that year.
They stated that it was “entirely funded through the donations of Irish citizens and people living in Ireland,” but added that this was “along with donations from registered corporate donors”.
Among those corporate donors were organisations including the above mentioned which did contribute financially to the campaign.
The National Women’s Council of Ireland, whose annual report for 2018 boasts of its direct participation in the abortion campaign, spent €947,000 that year – a year in which their staff, according to their own report, were heavily involved with the campaign.
Staff costs in 2018, were €725,302 according to the financial statements of NWCI – and some 90% of the total income of €794,938 for that year was from public funds – you and me in other words.
So, if their staff were highly engaged in the 2018 campaign – and the NWCI boasts that it was – how does that tally with the McKenna judgment which clearly stated that public funds must not be used in a referendum?
Look at the NWCI’s boast:
NWCI was one of the three lead organisations of Together for Yes (TFY), the national civil society campaign to remove the 8th Amendment from the Constitution.
Over the course of three months Together for Yes ran an immensely successful campaign that resulted in the resounding Yes vote on 25th May 2018 ….
Orla O’Connor was one of the three Co-Directors of TFY, together with Grainne Griffin for the Abortion Rights Campaign and Ailbhe Smyth for the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment. Several members of NWCI’s staff team were instrumental in running key aspects of the campaign, including campaign organisation, communications, social media, mobilisation and the Together for Yes platform of over 90 organisations that publicly supported the campaign.
So the staff of a publicly-funded organisation was instrumental” in “running key aspects of the campaign” in a referendum.
But the Supreme Court in the McKenna case was very clear: it said that the government was absolutely not allowed to use public funds. They were no exceptions. And the NWCI was – and is – largely publicly funded.
The media, of course, decided to turn a blind eye to the question of how a publicly funded NGO could involve itself in a political campaign without public money being spent on that campaign.
That’s even though the Supreme Court in McCrystal not only upheld the McKenna ruling but actually said that spending public money on one side of the referendum put the voting rights of one citizen above another, right down to what was said in booklets and advertisements.
Now, the NWCI has once again set itself at the head of the left liberal alliance of NGOs and every single party and grouping in Leinster House with the sole exception of Aontú and the Rural Independents in pushing for a Yes vote.
And they are joined by other publicly funded bodies – a long list of them – in campaigning for a YesYes, though they have not explained how they will ensure that the public funds which fund their staff will not be utilised for the campaign.
The impact of the corporate billionaire foundation dollars and pounds and Marks and whatever other currency they dispense will not be as obvious in this campaign.
Not because that will not bankroll most of the organisations involved, but because one of the key objectives of the philanthropic liberal foundations has been achieved.
That, particularly in the case of Atlantic whose own words document what they wished to achieve prior to closing the fund, is because the foundation seed capital has secured the place of the advocacy NGOs in Irish life.
It has done so by creating a whole layer of organisations who have been successful first of all in persuading a pliant state to “match fund” the foundation money, and then to directly replace foundations as the main funder of the advocacy NGOs. With your money of course, and without your consent.
Perhaps An Taoiseach and the majority of the current Cabinet might ponder exactly how their two parties have been captured by an ideology which would have been anathema not only to its founders but to leaders within living memory. It would be a better use of time than attacking those media and other entities which are dependent on neither Woke dollars nor state stipends and contracts.
But, in the meantime, perhaps some serious questions could be asked of why taxpayer funds are being spent to staff the NGOs who are campaigning in referendums in open defiance of the spirit of the McKenna judgment.