Does the government ever learn from its mistakes? | Morgane Conaty

In the wake of the Children’s Rights Referendum, Morgane Conaty questions what step comes next for the government.

     The result of the Children’s Rights referendum was not altogether satisfactory for the government, despite its acceptance by the electorate. The vote, which should have passed with little opposition, ended up being a lot closer than anticipated; this, coupled with poor voter turnout and a possible challenge to the result of the referendum demonstrated clearly that the government desperately needs to go back to the drawing board. But these are not new problems. In fact, each of these difficulties has been encountered before in previous referenda. So this begs the question: does the government ever learn from its mistakes?The most surprising and worrying aspect of the Referendum was the much closer margin between the ‘yes’ (57.4%) and the ‘no’ (42.6%) votes, notwithstanding the background to the amendment. This was a referendum proposing the recognition of the rights of children and following the countless cases of child neglect and abuse, it is astonishing that the amendment was not passed with a greater majority. One reason for this of course, could be the low turnout, and that extreme ‘no’ campaigners were more determined to go out and vote. But what seemed to be the trend on opinion polls and in interviews, was the confusion of the general public regarding the proposals. Because there was no simple question to which they could answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’, the electorate did not fully understand the proposal and did not know what they were voting for. This problem may have been generated from a lack of clarity and information, or perhaps the proposals were too detailed or too complex, or it may be that the electorate simply did not go out of their way to inquire into the amendment; whatever the reason, or combination of reasons, there was a definite failure of the government, as it is their duty, and also in their interests, to keep the public adequately informed.The turnout was also quite disappointing; only one in three decided to cast their vote, meaning that the majority of the electorate had no say in the Constitutional change. The government initially seem to be using the Saturday referendum as a pretext, with Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore stating the government may have to reconsider holding future referenda on a Saturday. The real issue here, which the government is bypassing, is not the day on which the vote was held; rather it is the content of the referendum. Abstention resulted from people not understanding the amendment, or being dissatisfied by the arguments from either side, not from people having better things to do on a Saturday than taking fifteen minutes to vote. Nice II was the first referendum held on a Saturday and the turnout was over 15% higher than the Children’s Referendum, at 49.47%, demonstrating that the day was not the problem.In these aspects there is a parallel with the Lisbon Treaty in 2008, which was rejected by 53.4% of the Irish people. In the research commissioned by the government in the aftermath of this, it was found that there was a great lack of knowledge regarding the content of the treaty. Only 47% of ‘no’ voters understood the Treaty compared with 70% of ‘yes’ voters. 45% of those who voted ‘no’ stated their reason as being a lack of comprehension and confusion as to what adoption of the Treaty would entail. The government were much better prepared for Lisbon II, providing basic information on the Treaty and increasing the involvement of the Referendum Commission. However though the government applied what they had learnt from their mistakes to Lisbon II, it does not appear that they employed these principles in the Children’s Rights Referendum, and very nearly to their detriment. It was clear from the beginning of the campaign that there was a disconnection between the government and the people and yet they did nothing to address this, despite having felt the impacts of this problem before.Another major mistake the government made was in relation to the biased information they distributed to the public. The Supreme Court in McCrystal, ruled that the government had “acted wrongfully” in spending €1.1 million of public money on a booklet and website which were in contradiction with the McKenna decision of 1995. With this precedent clearly engraining the principle that public funds cannot be used to promote one side in a referendum campaign, how was the government allowed to make the same mistake again? Not only is it deeply embarrassing for them, they also face the prospect of having the result of the referendum challenged in the courts. Though judging by the subsequent Hanafin decision after McKenna, it is highly unlikely that the result would be declared void.In assessing the outcome of the referendum, Minister Francis Fitzgerald, declared that it was a “historic day” for children’s rights in Ireland. But it was also a critical day for the government as they suffered the consequences of not applying the lessons learnt in previous referenda. Not only is it costly, it does not inspire confidence in the government, and that is the very last trend desired, with what is rumoured to be one of the toughest budgets yet on the horizon.