The Thirty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution is an amendment to the constitution of Ireland which removed the constitution's requirement to criminalise "publication or utterance of blasphemous matter". The amendment was effected by an act of the Oireachtas — the Thirty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution (Repeal of offence of publication or utterance of blasphemous matter) Act 2018, which was introduced (as bill no. 87 of 2018) in Dáil Éireann, passed by the Dáil and Seanad, approved by the people in a referendum, and signed into law by the president. The bill was introduced to the Oireachtas on 13 July 2018 by the Fine Gael minority coalition government. A referendum was held on 26 October, on the same date as the presidential election. A second referendum on whether to remove an article referring to women's place in the home, originally scheduled for the same date, was postponed until a later date. The amendment was approved by nearly 65% of the voters, and by a majority in every Dáil constituency. It was signed into law by the president on 27 November 2018. It was followed by separate legislation in 2019 to remove the crime of blasphemy from the statute book. Background The publication or utterance of blasphemous matter is an offence specified by the Constitution of Ireland as an exception to general guarantee of the right of the citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions. In Corway v Independent Newspapers (1999), the Supreme Court held that the common law crime of blasphemous libel related to an established church and could not have survived the enactment of the Constitution. They also held that it was impossible to say what the offence of blasphemy consisted of. The offence of publishing or uttering blasphemous matter was first defined in Irish law in the Defamation Act 2009. Someone is guilty of the offence if they publish or utter "matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion", and they intend, "by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage". There is a broad defence where "a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value in the matter to which the offence relates". To date, there has not been a public prosecution for the offence of blasphemy in the