Twentieth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland

The Twentieth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland provided constitutional recognition of local government and required that local government elections occur at least once in every five years. It was effected by the Twentieth Amendment of the Constitution Act, 2001, which was approved by referendum on 11 June 1999 and signed into law on 23 June of the same year.

In 1999, local government had been a long-standing feature of Irish political life. However it was not granted explicit recognition in the Constitution. Furthermore, there was discomfort that, without a constitutionally specified term limit, local elections sometimes occurred less frequently than once every five years. The Twentieth Amendment was introduced by the Fianna Fáil–Progressive Democrats coalition government of Bertie Ahern and was supported by Fine Gael and the Labour Party (the two major opposition parties). It was submitted to a referendum on the same day as the 1999 European Parliament elections. The result was 1,024,850 (77.8%) in favour and 291,965 (22.2%) against. While the change shown above is that made to the English-language version of the Constitution, constitutionally it is the Irish text that takes precedence.

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