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29th Jan 2019

Ireland will hold a referendum on easing divorce restrictions this year

Alan Loughnane

It will be held the same day as the local and European elections.

Ireland will hold a referendum this May to ask voters whether or not to ease the restrictions on divorce in Ireland.

Currently, under the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution Act 1995, Irish people are allowed to dissolve their marriage if certain conditions were satisfied.

One of these conditions is that at the start of the divorce proceedings with the court, the spouses have lived apart from one another for a period of, or periods amounting to, at least four years during the previous five years.

The referendum in May will be to ask the public if they want to delete this section from the constitution and allow the Oireachtas to decide the new period.

The move follows a Dáil bill tabled by Fine Gael’s Josepha Madigan, which proposed to reduce the mandatory period of separation between spouses to two years.

It’s thought the referendum will take place in May on the same day as the local and European elections.

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