Divorce: … To the Right to a Second Chance

Abstract

What took place in the area of family law following the defeat of the first divorce referendum appears to be evidence of a radically different strategy. The problem did not disappear as the 1986 census figures and later the 1991 ones, proved, bearing witness, as was pointed out earlier, to the growing anachronism that the ban on divorce was. They showed that the number of separated people was growing alarmingly, with a 48 per cent increase in five years. Irish people, the legislators included, began to accept that the absence of divorce did not protect the institution of marriage and that they resorted to all sorts of solutions to put an end to deadlocked marital situations, as detailed earlier. Seeing both the overt and the underlying opposition to divorce, in all political parties, how would it be possible to introduce major legislative changes in the wake of a resounding defeat? The introduction of divorce in Ireland was not on the agenda as a majority had rejected it in principle, and as it was out of the question to make civil annulment procedures more accessible for fear of hypocrisy, it remained to change the legislation on legal separation. This avenue which, by loosening the bond of marriage, has long been presented as the Catholics’ divorce, because it is compatible with the dogma of the indissolubility of marriage, is a palliative that has developed wherever divorce is not available.