What’s it all about Alfie? wrote Burt Bacharach.
What were the great referenda on Family and Care actually about I ask? Nonsense. Absolute and entire non-sense, as the man on the street in Balbriggan said. Wisely. That may come across as a hard thing to say. Family and care are dignified, sacred and human aspirations. We all belong in those varied worlds.
But the referenda to delete and replace wording in the constitution around these aspirations was unnecessary and appalling nonsense and the nonsense went on and on and on. If I was to vote no I would be left reeling, with no rights, alone, done in, isolated, unrecognised and powerless. This was my only chance. Change must come, and it must come now the informing yes brigade confidently told me as they filled space on TV, radio and print until the discerning public put a no no stop to it on Friday. Hopefully forever.
‘We didn’t do our job well enough. The government could have done more to get behind the family and care referendum campaigns,’ said Minister Mary Butler, as if this was the reason for the abject rejection and failure.
‘We will have to reflect on the reasons,’ sighed the family and care Minister Roderick O Gorman using evident alliteration to convey his personal loss. Ivana Bacik thought the whole thing was actual progress in relation to what was in the constitution, and went on to blame the government for the catastrophe, even though she and other senators, TD’s and minsters bored us all senseless for months on what we the people knew was incomprehensible jargon, masquerading as a gender and caring way forward.
‘There are lots of other things happening in the world’ argued Leo determined to take the national two wallops on the chin. You’re right Leo, you’re right, and you didn’t let any of them get in the way of the 23 million you spent on this national fiasco.
‘It is money well spent,’ said the youthful Eamon Ryan, he must have been thinking about national gardens.
The digging of the hole began.
The governments explanations didn’t meet the threshold of certainty for many people,’ Butler continued. The threshold of certainty! What does it mean? Does certainty have a threshold? More nonsense, but this time in response. We are not listening Mary. You’re on your own threshold. Deservedly. The hole was getting deeper. ‘I’m extremely disappointed,’ Roderick said quietly in front of one lone microphone.
This national flop raises very serious questions around how we are being governed.
Non-sense was never contemplated or recognised by the know all government and the hive minded opposition parties. It took the people to put an end to the peddling of superior untruths which were not even afforded the scrutiny- time of day- in either the Seanad or the Dail. This is very worrying.
So, I’ll tell you what it was all about Alfie. My answer is quite simple. It’s about government and NGO arrogance, ignorance and ego. And throw in an ‘out of touch’ authority against the people whom they think they govern.
But it doesn’t end there.
In from the side line comes the director of the National Women’s Council of Ireland, Orla O’ Connor.
The National Women’s Council of Ireland, astride their highly paid tax payers purse mountain, must know what they are doing and saying and suggesting. We better listen because they know how the real world works and they know what is good for me and my family and my future.
No, no, they don’t.
I’m a single mother since the 80’s and they never knocked on my door or asked me a question or represented me in any way. Legislation did that. All children in Ireland from a cosmos of backgrounds have all their rights embraced equally under Irish law. No differentiation as set out in the Children’s Rights Alliance. I’ll send the NWC a copy.
Stigma has not marred my life, as O Connor wrote in the Irish Times on January 6th about single mothers. Many things mar our lives, that’s reality. Even the weather, but it is rarely today – if ever – the child or no child.
The suggested language change in the articles of the constitution was atrocious. Families as ‘durable relationships’ is an extraordinary use of the word ‘durable’. What does that mean? Nobody knows. I’m on the second floor of Arnotts trying on a durable raincoat with matching umbrella. And there’s always a battery.
But it wasn’t just the language. Back to the overall non-sense . The initial thought process was a fundamental untruth. The rot started there.
The constitution does not say that a woman’s place is in the home.
Ms Justice Denham (as she then was), observed, in a dissenting judgment, that: Article 41.2 does not assign women to a domestic role. Article 41.2 recognises the significant role played by wives and mothers in the home. This recognition and acknowledgement does not exclude women and mothers from other roles and activities.
This was completely ignored. Deliberately ignored.
It is nobody’s right to take the word mother out of our constitution. Mother, motherhood, mothering has been in our breath and lives for thousands of years.
‘Our heaven was in Aughawillan. With her, our world was without end……. If we could walk together through those summer lanes with their banks of wild flowers that ‘cast a spell’, we probably would not be able to speak though I would want to tell her all the local news. I know that consciously or unconsciously, she has been with me all my life.’
This is what John McGahern wrote in Memoir about his short-lived joy with his beloved mother in her native place.
To take mother out of the constitution is so incredulous and damaging and crude, that it trumps all other inanities.
On the NWC website following their magnanimous defeat their director has written;
‘While the reasons for the defeat are complex, the result is a clear wake -up call that we cannot be complacent about equality and women’s rights,’
Well Ms. O’Connor, you are about as far away from women’s rights as ever. Where were your women’s rights when your organisation representing the women of Ireland was recommending that we take the very essence of who we are out of the constitution and call it gender equality? It is not. I could argue well with you that the word Mother is outside your confines and your definitions of gender equality. As is Father. They are unique, distinctive and exceptional words. Mother as nourishment, as earth, as womb, as life giving, as mother maker. If you have doubts about this Ms. O’Connor have a look at the Pieta by Michael Angelo next time you are in Rome. It will tell you all you need to know. People from around the world queue every day to see and experience it, and are moved to tears because of what it evokes and reveals.
I refuse to have the word mother reduced to a second- rate sociological construct to suit some ideology that lacks melody, meaning and imagination. I loved my mother. I would not be here without her. She birthed me. and I thank her every day for that gift.
It’s very hard not to explode here on the page.
‘I value care and it was clear that the public wanted more’, writes Ms O Connor and assures us that she is going to combine with civil society organisations to campaign for public care services.
We all value care Ms O’Connor. Might I suggest over the next year or two you spend all the time and energy you can calling for respite care and residential care for families, and extra staff and home help for our older generation, since you seem to have such influence with the government and have at your disposal their very evident listening ear. You’ll forgive me for suggesting that you could be compared to a mini-government and are nearly paid as such, even though I didn’t elect you.
Ms O’Connor, we do want more. Not the constitutional nonsense obfuscating and obscuring our lived reality of housing, health and education. We want good lives for our children, parents, families (in whatever form) relations and friends. I’m sure you want that too. But you need to prioritize louder and outside what has become the lowering mist of gender.
You might return to the exchequer the tax payer’s money you spent on this campaign. I will ask the government to do the same. You and the government could divide it between some disability services and some better and more ‘durable’ tents for immigrants who are living and sleeping on our streets.
On a final note, Sinn Fein TD Claire Kerrane said her party ‘called it wrong, and she is big enough to say that.’ What exactly did you call wrong Claire? Do you know? Well, like the Government and the NWC and all the rest of the herd mind, you do now, because the public told you.
I’m reminded of the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. Running across the fields, he was heard to say……….I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date.’
The author, Marie-Louise O’Donnell is an Irish academic, and later broadcaster and politician, who served as a Senator from 2011 to 2020, after being nominated by the Taoiseach.