People Before Profit calls for Yes vote in care and family referendums

People Before Profit will call for a Yes vote in upcoming referendums even though the party says the Government’s proposed wording on the constitutional changes is “well short” of what is required.

On Wednesday the party published the amendments it will be seeking to put down during a Dáil debate on legislation enabling the referendum votes on care and the family due to be held on Wednesday afternoon.

The party is pushing for a non-discrimination clause to be added to Article 40.1, as well as deleting Article 41.3.1 which it says gives an unjustified special status to marriage.

It is also arguing that the reference to women in the home should be deleted entirely and replaced with an amendment committing the State to provide necessary resources to support care outside the home and family – rather than the government’s wording, which says the State should “strive to support” care.

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PBP said this language was “insulting to carers” and “vague and non-committal”.

PBP TD for Dublin South Central Bríd Smith said the party would be calling for a Yes vote in both referendums, but added: “I think it’s important to be able to criticise what we’ve got in front of us, and what we’ve got in front of us falls well short.”

She said recommendations from the citizens’ assembly and the Oireachtas committee which studied its report had been ignored, but that the Government’s wording could work as a “foundation which we have to build on and campaign for”, saying that was a “positive view of what’s not a great piece of constitutional change”.

“But we do not want to see this defeated, because weak and all as it is, it would be a retrograde step for the country to reject this.”

Bernard Mulvany, a PBP councillor in Dublin and a carer for his daughter, was sharply critical of the wording of the care referendum and said he may go so far as to vote no in the referendum.

“Family carers are left consistently struggling all the time in Irish society. It’s lauded on us how wonderful we are, how brilliant we are and how fantastic we are – but at the end of the day that doesn’t put food on the table.”

“So many people are struggling all the time and we’ve no way of coming back at the State and saying: you’re failing us.”

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