No-Divorce Campaign to seek new referendum

THE Government will publish the Divorce Bill as soon as the legal procedures arising from the Supreme Court decision are fulfilled.

This was signalled by the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, in the Dail yesterday when he announced that the Bill to legalise divorce would he published "as soon as the Government can move with legal prudence".

It is understood that the legal procedure to which Mr Bruton was referring was the endorsement of the referendum certificate by the High Court. A stay was put on its endorsement when Mr Des Hanafin petitioned the High Court in an attempt to have the result declared null and void.

Meanwhile, a Fine Gael TD, Ms Frances Fitzgerald, described Mr Justice O'Hanlon's attack on the President, Mrs Robinson, as "outrageous and disgraceful".

In contrast to the dignified manner in which Mr Hanafin had accepted the outcome of the Supreme Court's unanimous decision, Judge O'Hanlon had launched a vitriolic and unfounded attack on the President on RTE, she said.

What made the attack by the chairman of the No-Divorce Campaign all the more disgraceful, she said, was that it had been done behind the President's back while she was in the US.

Carol Coulter adds.

The No-Divorce Campaign is remaining in existence to fight for a new divorce referendum, seeking to delete the divorce Amendment to the Constitution, according to its vice chairman, Dr Gerard Casey.

However, the campaign does not expect early success. "We're talking about climbing Mount Everest backwards," Dr Casey said. "Even in the most propitious circumstances it took the pro-divorce people nine years to overturn the two to one vote against divorce in 1986."

"It underscored for me the importance of having someone in Dail Eireann," Dr Casey said. He is also chairman of the Christian Solidarity Party, and stood in the recent Dublin West by election, where he received 768 first preference votes.

He said he was not disappointed with this result. He had hoped to get 1,000 first preference votes and had come close to it. It would be a slow process.

However, he did not accept that the "liberal agenda" was now in place for all time. "We have not yet begun to fight. We will torment people for the next 40, 50, 60 years.