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Notes -
I think it was simpler than that; we have a Citizens' Assembly where the Dáil (our parliament) puts questions to a selected number of the public for consideration as to what they'd like to happen. It's something along the lines of representative democracy and something like the ideal of prediction markets. A while back they asked the Citizens about gender equality.
The gay marriage and even abortion referenda had gone well, so the current government - being criticised for the housing crisis, matters such as the immigrant who attacked preschool kids, and the revelations about the money-wasting going on with our national broadcaster - wanted an easy feel-good result to make people happy and let the government bask in the resulting glow of "things are getting better".
Well, they mucked this one up big-time. Turns out people were not worried about sexist language in the Constitution, hence the low turn-out, and that the general public didn't trust the government weren't trying to weasel out of responsibility towards those in need by shoving off all caregiving onto 'the family'.
Just to clarify, I didn't really just comment on this referendum (there's probably indeed a large factor of the government just screwing up), or just Ireland in general, but - as is tradition in forums like this - just used the topic to pontificate on something else I've been thinking about recently.
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