Yesford!

In the beginning there was the 8^th and the 8^th became law and dwelt amongst us. In the end it was dispatched in Wexford by almost 50,000 voters.  It’s a turning point for Ireland. I got the feeling at the start of this week that as the week progressed the more the gap between yes and no widened. Last night I predicted to some on our Together for Yes campaign that the gap will be significantly wider than we might dare think.

In the end it was over 23,000 votes. The count started at 9AM in St Joseph’s Community Centre in Wexford. When the council officials advised that they would open 25 ballot boxes each time it was clear to both Yes and No camps that we didn’t have enough to tally.

Former Senator Jim Walsh approached me and proposed to jointly tally. We shook hands and agreed to share figures. I’ll say one thing about Jim Walsh, personally he’s as decent as the day is long. I’d agree with him on some issues and on social issues we’d diverge. He told me he is bitterly disappointed with the result. I told him I know how it feels to lose in an election.  I also pointed out that

into the future that another Dáil decided to change the law to be more restrictive, that is the right of that generation.

And so it was to the tally, By and large it was a small group although one person from the No side told me I was a hypocrite for going to church as I was an abortionist. My colleague Cllr George Lawlor was rounded on for singing at church ceremonies while the luckless Minister Paul Kehoe was rounded on by a prominent No campaigner as he left the count with his young daughter and was verbally abused for legislating for murder.

By lunchtime it was all over. 190 boxes opened and tallied. A small crowd awaited the declaration and the result was Repeal 49,935 and to retain 23,069.

So where do we go from here? On reflection it is the end of a liberalising journey for Ireland since the 1990’s when homosexuality was decriminalised, divorce introduced and contraception regularised among other issues.   But the Iona Institute won’t be going away. They will be lobbying for the laws to be softened and no group will do that more expertly than Iona. Indeed lobbying a small group such as Oireachtas members might be more efficient and effective for Iona and its supporters than the wider public in a social media age.

The signs were there that no wasn’t doing well. Yesterday all the trending on twitter was hashtags that supported repeal. How could the No campaign that had targeted social media to spend its money have let that happen? The row between different no groups as to who’d represent them in a tv debate and the ban by google on advertising all undermined the credibility of the No side. However it was the behaviour of some of their canvassers on doorsteps and tearing down Yes posters which upset people who were genuinely in the middle.

If this means that despite all the spending on social media and voter manipulation voters are rejecting the politics of spin and negativity we may have many reasons into the future to thank the electorate for their decision today.

There’s a lot of people who worked hard on the campaign. I’ll mention a few, Shane McAnally, and Doris Murphy who energised us all. Aislinn Wallace played a blinder. I know when you start to name drop that in a diverse campaign like this one, you don’t mention someone and you leave someone out. There would have been no campaign without them. In Wexford a lot of independent minded people turned out to canvas, many for the first time. Labour, Sinn Fein and People Before Profit all fought the good fight with one FG member and that was that.

50,000 reasons to be glad that we live in a democracy. That is the alpha and omega of politics.