Divorce a ‘much less divisive’ issue now than at last referendum

Keith Walsh

Mr Walsh discussed possible changes to Ireland’s divorce laws on The Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk this morning amid reports that a new divorce referendum could take place next May.

He said Ireland’s current divorce laws, brought in after the narrow success of the 1995 referendum, are “working okay” but that proposals by Josepha Madigan to reform the law are “entirely sensible”.

Mr Walsh said: “It was such a major change 21 years ago when it was introduced that it took a while to bed in, but there hasn’t been an opening of the floodgates.”

He pointed out that Ireland still had one of the “smallest rates of divorce in Europe, and that will continue whatever changes are made”.

Ms Madigan has proposed that the requirement for couples to have separated for four of the five years immediately preceding a divorce should be reduced to three of the four previous years.

The Law Reform Commission is also looking into what Mr Walsh called a “more far-ranging reform” of divorce law.

Mr Walsh said he believed divorce is “no longer the hot-button issue that it was” and that Ireland is a “completely different country now than we were 21 years ago - not just economically, but socially we’re a much more diverse country”.