Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland


The Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution Act 1992 is an amendment to the Constitution of Ireland permitted the state to ratify the Treaty on European Union, commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty. It was approved by referendum on 18 June 1992 and signed into law on 16 July of the same year.

Overview

The Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution was one of a number of amendments that have been made to expressly permit the state to ratify changes to the founding treaties of the European Union . These amendments were all adopted because of the finding of the Supreme Court in Crotty v. An Taoiseach that major changes to the treaties are unconstitutional unless accompanied by an amendment.
The Eleventh Amendment was introduced by a Fianna Fáil–Progressive Democrats coalition government and was also supported by opposition parties Fine Gael and the Labour Party. Democratic Left and the Green Party were opposed to it. Some anti-abortion groups also opposed the treaty, arguing that it might lead to legalised abortion in Ireland.

Changes to the text

The Eleventh Amendment amended Article 29.4 by the deletion of the highlighted sentence from subsection 3º:
and by the addition of the following subsections:

Result