IRELAND
Irish Times
Harry McGee
Analysis: Attorney General will now have to explain where it all went wrong
On Thursday after the Supreme Court delivered its thunderbolt that struck down the Government’s information campaign on the children’s referendum, senior spokespeople from the Coalition were able to hide behind the fact that the court had decided to give a short judgment without setting out its full reasoning, beyond a 500 word precis.
But short though the ruling was on Thursday, there was no doubting its import.
December 11th, when the full judgment is published, will be a deliverance day for the Government with potentially serious questions for the Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald, Attorney General Máire Whelan, and for the Government as a whole.
The chronology of the crisis had its beginning in the failed referendum campaign of October 2011. Following the failure to give parliamentary committees more power, the Government commissioned research to find out why people voted against the measure. One of the key findings was that voters felt there had been a lack of accessible information despite the presence of the Referendum Commission and its information campaign.
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