Former president Mary McAleese says a Yes vote in the marriage referendum would mean gay people would be seen as first class citizens in this country for the first time.

The former president was speaking after attending a Yes campaign event for BeLonG To in Dublin this morning, ahead of Friday's vote.

She said concerns about adoption and surrogacy have now been proven as being unrelated to the referendum, and that neither a Yes or No vote would change those laws.

Mary McAleese told the Pat Kenny show that when the Constitution was written gay citizens were regarded as unequal - and a Yes vote would change that:

The former president explained to Pat that "so many young gay people... they intuit at the age of 12 that they are gay. They are terrified in a community that has so much taboo around the subject. They often do not find the words until they are 17. That is five very, very lonely years."

"BeLonG To is an organisation that is about 'debranding' and ending the isolation," she added.

She spoke to Pat about her son Justin, who recently revealed he struggled growing up as a gay man in Ireland. "I probably knew [that he was gay] when he asked for a vacuum cleaner from Santa Claus," his mother joked. "I was always very glad he grew up in a household where he never heard a homophobic word uttered. Long before I ever had children I was involved in gay rights campaigning." 

She also discussed some of the arguments being made during the Marriage Referendum campaigns. "If the only marriage you enter into as a Catholic is a civil registry office marriage, then it's not regarded as valid by the Catholic Church," she said. "But many countries separate Church and State. We don't actually have that phenomenon here in Ireland. I think that's what has caused confusion in the public. I think it would have been very useful if, in all the many words the Church has written officially about this, they had explained that to us".

"There's another part of the Constitution that guarantees complete religious equality," she explained. On the subject of the Constitution's stance on the role of women, she said "nothing that we do on Friday will have the remotest impact on that. I think people want to be very, very careful about the claims they make of the consequences of simply allowing gay civil registry marriages. "

"Nonsense talked about adoption and surrogacy"

Discussing the arguments concerning children and surrogacy, she said, "we've had nonsense talked about adoption and surrogacy. Thankfully we've had that clarified by the experts. Adoption law will not change one whit... surrogacy is not an issue,"

She added that "what we don't have in Ireland is any regulation of surrogacy... This is one of the areas where there's huge agreement between the Yes and No campaigns, that surrogacy should be regulated."

Summing up her argument, the former President said, "when we wrote the Constitution in 1937, effectively gay people were completely overlooked. They were actually regarded as evil, they were criminalised. It's a long time since then, it's a long time to be regarded as second class citizens. On Friday we have the chance to make gay citizens first class citizens... That's what we need to focus on."

On the subject of Friday's other referendum - on the age of presidential candidates - the former president would not be drawn on either stance. "I'm going to give that all day Thursday to contemplate, and when I vote it will be a secret," she told Pat.

No side 'echo her warm words about gay people'

Mothers and Fathers Matter spokesperson Eileen King has responded to the comments from Mrs McAleese.

"We in the No campaign echo her warm words about gay people, and equality," she said.

"If this was a referendum about how we felt about gay people, then I for one would vote Yes with a full heart."

"Unfortunately, it is about more than that. It's about the fact that on Saturday morning, if we vote Yes, the highest laws of our land will say that there is no difference whatsoever between the marriage of two men, and the marriage of a man and a woman."

"That will have consequences – some of them foreseeable, some of them not, and especially for children who will now have nothing in our constitution recognising the importance of mothers and fathers," she added.

You can listen back to the full interview below: