Irish state. The Constitutional Convention held a session in November 2013, where they proposed replacing the offence of blasphemy in the Constitution with a prohibition on the incitement of religious hatred. The matter came to public attention, in May 2017, when it was announced that English comedian Stephen Fry, along with broadcaster RTÉ, were under criminal investigation for blasphemy under the Act, following a complaint from a member of the public about comments made by Fry in a 2015 broadcast interviewed with veteran Irish broadcaster Gay Byrne. The case was dropped after Gardaí confirmed that they had not been able to locate a sufficient number of offended people. In June 2018, Minister for Justice and Equality Charles Flanagan announced that the government would hold a referendum to simply remove the reference to the offence of blasphemy from the Constitution. Changes to the text The Thirty-seventh Amendment amended the final sentence of paragraph i of subsection 1º of Article 40.6 by substituting "seditious" for "blasphemous, seditious,". The original text read: The text as amended reads: Subsequent legislation The Department of Justice and Equality's draft general scheme for subsequent legislation proposed that the Government introduce a formal Bill to repeal sections 36 and 37 of the Defamation Act 2009, which dealt with the 'Publication or utterance of blasphemous matter' and the 'Seizure of copies of blasphemous statements' respectively, as well as to replace the words "indecent, obscene, or blasphemous" by "indecent or obscene" in the Censorship of Films Act 1923 as amended by the Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2008, and in the Censorship of Films (Amendment) Act 1925. The Blasphemy (Abolition of Offences and Related Matters) Act 2019, enacted on 17 January 2020, removed these offences from statute law. Passage through the Oireachtas The Bill was proposed by Minister Charlie Flanagan and passed all stage in the Dáil on 18 September and all stages of the Seanad on 20 September. Amendments by Solidarity to remove other religious references from the Constitution were ruled out of order. It was opposed in the Seanad by Rónán Mullen. Campaign A Referendum Commission to provide information to the public on the proposed amendment was established on 18 July 2018. Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government Eoghan Murphy signed the electoral order for the referendum on 21 September, setting the polling date as 26 October. By 17 October, there had been little public debate about