Irish politics makes me mad

The referendum on the 8th amendment of the Irish constitution is due on the 25th of May. This amendment, for all intents and purposes, banned abortion in Ireland.

It’s a heated topic here as much as it is anywhere else in the world. For my part, I’ll be voting to repeal the amendment but I’m not going to get into that now. My beef is really with what’s going to happen if the referendum does end up changing the constitution.

Ireland has a terrible set of politicians. Which country doesn’t? I hear you cry. This is true, but this lot are so bad at their job, so afraid of doing anything controversial or assertive, that they simply don’t make laws. At all.

So, in any other country, if there was a possible change of the consitution that meant that abortion was going to be made legal, the government would prepare laws that would come into effect once the change occurred. That’s common sense, right? But this lot are so spineless, this isn’t going to happen.

As such, if the amendment is repealed, there will be a legal limbo where somebody could potentially have an abortion and there won’t be any laws to cover it. There are existing laws but, without the backing of the constitution, they’re open to being challenged in court.

We could end up with the chance that our laws will be defined by somebody other than our lawmakers. Only in Ireland.