Eighteenth Amendment of The Constitution of Ireland - Overview

Overview

The Eighteenth Amendment of the Constitution was one of a number of amendments that have been made to expressly permit the state to ratify changes to the founding treaties of the European Union (others have been the Tenth, Eleventh and Twenty-sixth Amendments). These amendments have all been adopted in response to the 1987 ruling of the Supreme Court, in the case of Crotty v. An Taoiseach, that major changes to the treaties are unconstitutional unless accompanied by an amendment. However it has been a matter of scholarly dispute as to whether or not every one of these treaties has been sufficiently far-reaching as to actually necessitate a constitutional amendment. The Treaty of Amsterdam contained a number of optional protocols that member-states could activate at a later time after its adoption. The Eighteenth Amendment permitted the Republic to choose to exercise these options, provided it had the support of the Oireachtas (parliament). While the changes shown above are those made to the English language version of the constitution, constitutionally it is the Irish text that takes precedence.

The Eighteenth Amendment was introduced by the Fianna Fáil–Progressive Democrats coalition government of Bertie Ahern and was also supported by Fine Gael and the Labour Party (the two major opposition parties). The referendum on the amendment occurred on the same day as the referendum on the Nineteenth Amendment, which related to the Good Friday Agreement. The Eighteenth Amendment was approved by 932,632 (61.7%) votes in favour to 578,070 (38.3%) against, a narrower margin than in previous referendums on the European Union