Referendums 2013

The referendum proposals were on whether or not you wanted to abolish Seanad Éireann and whether or not you wanted to establish a Court of Appeal and make other changes to the Courts system.

Seanad Éireann Referendum

Thirty-second Amendment of the Constitution (Abolition of Seanad Éireann) Bill 2013.

The proposal to abolish Seanad Éireann was put to the people on 4 October 2013.

The proposal was rejected by the people.

Court of Appeal Referendum

Thirty-third Amendment of the Constitution (Court of Appeal) Bill 2013

The proposal was approved by the people.

Report

You can read the report of the Referendum Commission online and download a PDF of the report (size 770KB).

Market Research

Each Referendum Commission conducts market research after polling day to measure the effectiveness of the various elements of its campaign and to gain understanding of the reasons people did not vote.

The Commission's role is to raise awareness of the referendum, to explain the referendum proposal and encourage voter turnout. The objective of the research is to assist future Commissions to plan a campaign that will be most effective in fulfilling its role.

The research after the Seanad and Court of Appeal Referendums were carried out on the Commission's behalf by the independent polling company Behaviour and Attitudes. Their report of the research is published here (PDF size 1.24 MB).

Website

The Commission developed a dedicated website for the the Seanad and Court of Appeal Referendums: referendum2013.ie.