Thirty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland

Thirty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution

26 October 2018 (2018-10-26)
Repeal of offence of publication or utterance of blasphemous matter
Results
Choice Votes % Yes 951,650 64.85% No 515,808 35.15% Valid votes 1,467,458 98.51% Invalid or blank votes 22,236 1.49% Total votes 1,489,694 100.00% Registered voters/turnout 3,401,652 43.79%
Results by county

The Thirty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution is an amendment to the constitution of Ireland which removed the constitution's requirement to criminalise "publication or utterance of blasphemous matter". The amendment was effected by an act of the Oireachtas — the Thirty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution (Repeal of offence of publication or utterance of blasphemous matter) Act 2018, which was introduced (as bill no. 87 of 2018) in Dáil Éireann, passed by the Dáil and Seanad, approved by the people in a referendum, before it was signed into law by the president.

The bill was introduced to the Oireachtas on 13 July 2018 by the Fine Gael minority coalition government. A referendum was held on 26 October, on the same date as the presidential election.^[1] A second referendum on whether to remove an article referring to women's place in the home, originally scheduled for the same date, was postponed, taking place on 8 March 2024.^[2]

The amendment was approved by nearly 65% of the voters, and by a majority in every Dáil constituency.^[3] It was signed into law by the president on 27 November 2018.^[4] It was followed by separate legislation in 2019 to remove the crime of blasphemy from the statute book.