The successful divorce referendum of 1995 was followed by numerous legal challenges, but much of the debate on the subsequent Family Law (Divorce) Bill of 1996 revealed a country coming to terms with the reality of marriage breakdown. However, any proposition that divorce reform marked the end of the country’s liberalisation was premature: Ireland still had to negotiate a myriad of social issues including abortion. The subsequent Family (Divorce) Law Act of 1996, bar minor and technical amendments, mirrored the draft bill presented to the country prior to the second referendum and the provisions of the act are considered in a comparative perspective. The rate of divorce in the post-reform era is also assessed on gender, religious and regional grounds; there was no flood of applications to divorce as many had predicted in the anti–divorce campaign. However, by the late 1990s the Irish divorce rate moved towards Western European norms. As Irish divorce rates stabilised, they proved that most of the qualms which both delayed divorce law reform and fuelled preoccupations with the ‘common good’ over the needs of the individual were inexorably flawed.

The period from 1969 to 1984 saw divorce reform in the majority of Western countries, but Ireland remained in the unique position with no provision for divorce, finding an ally only further afield in Malta. The establishment of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Marital Breakdown in 1985 was, however, an admission by the state that increasing numbers of marriages ended before the death of a spouse and laid the foundations for the first referendum to remove the constitutional ban on divorce in the following year. Social activism, clerical and political attitudes towards divorce reform as well as the cause of the defeat of the referendum are explored. Despite the referendum defeat, a significant and overdue era of Irish family law reform followed which laid the foundations for a second divorce referendum and ultimately the removal of the constitutional ban in the second divorce referendum of 1995. Keenly and often antagonistically fought, the result was so close that a recount was held. This left Ireland with the challenge of introducing legislation on divorce, an issue long-held as the pinnacle of liberalism where many remained resistant to reform