When looking back at the divorce referendum, it's impossible not to see similarities to the recent Marriage Equality referendum.
Twenty years ago this week, the divorce referendum was passed in Ireland with a barely-there majority of 50.3% of the vote.
Leading up to the vote, the slogan "Hello Divorce... Bye Bye Daddy" was plastered across the country, with many corners fearing that husbands would be abandoning their wives and families en masse.
However, this fear never materialized. In 1997, the first divorces were granted, with 95 divorces passed. The most divorces granted in one year was back in 2007, when 3,684 divorces were passed, but even then, it was a mere 0.9 per 1,000 inhabitants.
Since then, the numbers have been tapering off, down to 0.6 per 1,000 inhabitants, the lowest divorce rate in all of Europe.
Why it is exactly that divorce has become more popular here than in other nations (in the U.S., divorce is found in 5.5 per 1,000 inhabitants, almost ten times our amount), but the fear mongering by the No campaigners at the time does appear to be unfounded.
