Because I was directly involved in the canvassing in favour of divorce in both the 1986 and the 1995 referendums I don’t know how much of that I can disclose but here goes. As the ban on divorce was written into the Irish Constitution it could only be overturned by referendum. All constitutional changes have to go to referendum.

The arguments against divorce in both referendums were for the most part economic, and not moral as some foreign press reported it. In 1986 the no divorce side very successfully convinced a majority of the population that divorce would mean poverty for families, as family homes would be lost. Most especially for the rural areas the fear that the family farm, held for generations, would be lost as assets would have to be divided. Again and again direct canvassers going door to door or standing outside commuter train stations would be confronted with people asking about the loss of assets. Women were especially targeted with pamphlets declaring that women would lose succession, pension and property rights, and could even be divorced against their will. The pre-election polling also showed economic concerns to be a major issue for the electorate. In the end the vote went down with 65% of voters saying no to divorce.

However marital breakdown was a problem and some legislation was needed to deal with the issue of child support, custody of children, monetary responsibility, ownership of family home etc. So in 1989 the government passed a law allowing for legal separation with a legal path to deal with these issues. It was only legal separation and no re-marriage was provided for.

The issue of re-marriage then loomed large and another referendum was called for as that would require a constitutional change. The second referendum took place on the 24th of November 1995, and passed by only a small margin, with 50.3% of the electorate voting in favour of lifting the ban on divorce. Only a little over 9000 votes separated the two sides.

There was no rush to the courts however and the divorce rate was low during the first year after the legislation. Only 93 couples divorced in the first twelve months. Now with one in ten marriages in Ireland ending in separation or divorce, Ireland has the lowest rate of divorce in Europe and the third lowest in the world, after Mexico and Chile.

The number of divorces was 95 in 1997, 1421 in 1998, 2333 in 1999. Then a slow increase to 3433 in 2005. (Source: cso) Bottom line: The floodgates did not open. There was no initial backlog surge. There were no hidden shock divorces.

1.Judicial separation was legal long before divorce. The divorce law requires coupes to have lived apart for four years. So the first divorces were to people who had been legally separated for years. 2. Foreign divorces were already recognised (as a corollary of recognising foreign marriages). When rich couples wanted a divorce before 1996 one spouse would go live in the UK for long enough to get a divorce. Mary Banotti was a leading politician divorced from her Italian husband. she ran for president in 1997. 3. Civil annulment was available but much more restricted than Catholic Church annulment. Many people remarried in Church after a Church annulment while legally still married to their first spouse. Technically bigamy but never prosecuted.

There were not huge numbers of people living a shameful lie who came out in 1997. There were lots of people separated or remarried in fact and in public but not in law. After 1997 many regularised their situation. The divorce rate is still relatively low today.