Mary Lou McDonald says Sinn Féin will re-run referendums on family and care if they do not pass

MARY Lou McDonald has said a Sinn Féin government will re-run the referendums on family and care if they do not pass next month.

The party is calling for two Yes votes in the referendums taking place on March 8 but Ms McDonald has criticised the Government for failing to adopt the wording proposed by the Citizens’ Assembly for the referendum on care.

“We would return to the Citizens’ Assembly wording, that’s what should be happening now and if this is not successful, that’s where we will bring that,” she said at a press event to launch Sinn Féín’s call for two Yes votes, adding it was her ambition to do this early in the term of a Sinn Féin government.

But Ms McDonald said Sinn Féin is calling for two Yes votes next month, arguing the removal of “sexist language from the constitution, of course is a good thing”.

She said the Government had failed adopt the Citizens’ Assembly recommendation, which proposed deleting the ‘women in the home’ clause from the constitution and replacing it with non-gender-specific language that obliges the State “to take reasonable measures to support care within the home and wider community”.

Instead the proposition to be voted on on March 8 says the State will “strive to support” care.

“On the one hand, it represents a positive step forward. But on the other hand, it is not the comprehensive copper-fastened recognition of care, vindicating the rights of care and carers inside the home and beyond, which certainly the Citizens Assembly had envisaged,” she said.

“We had to weigh that up and in the end, we decided not to allow the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

She said that many carers had told her that “this should be grasped as a positive if imperfect step forward”.

Meanwhile, Ms McDonald said Sinn Féin’s recent slump in the opinion polls would prompt the party to “re-energise the message of change” in the forthcoming elections, arguing it was hard to “sustain a narrative of change” in the four years since the last election.

“Whatever support we have lost, we have to work to win it back again, in a way it’s not rocket science, it’s about engaging with people, listening to people, setting out our platform,” she said.

Elsewhere, on the RTÉ crisis, Ms McDonald criticised exit packages for top executives. “I think it is quite something that if you’re an RTÉ executive, and you mess up, and you walk away, you walk away with a golden handshake,” she said.

“If you’re a regular person and you walk away from your job you walk away with nothing, as a matter of fact you have difficulty getting a social welfare payment.”

She defended her party’s proposal for an amnesty for those who have not paid their TV licence, saying it was “not a smart or a sensible use” of the court’s time and her party was saying to those who have paid, including herself, that they won’t have to pay again.

She expressed confidence in RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst, but said he has “questions to answer” in relation to former executive Rory Coveney’s exit package. However, she added she was “very reluctant” to call on Enterprise Minister Simon Coveney to implore his brother to disclose his settlement.

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