It must be said, I did not take well to the result of the Irish abortion referendum. In general, I’m all for referendums and would like to have them routinely, like the Swiss. But this campaign was so skewed in its coverage and character – the entire political class on one side, plus every paper and broadcaster – as to bring the whole exercise into disrepute.

A third of the electorate found they had no representation among the party leaders nor in papers and broadcast media; they were disenfranchised. And the sheer mendacity of the campaign, using vanishingly rare hard cases to justify sweeping abortion provision, was hard to stomach.