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TRANSPORT MINISTER LEO Varadkar has said that the children’s referendum will go ahead tomorrow and said that if the government made a mistake in relation to its information campaign it accepts that.
Varadkar, who is Fine Gael’s director of elections for the referendum campaign, was speaking on RTÉ Radio this morning following the Supreme Court ruling that the contents of the government’s referendum website and information booklet was “not fair, equal or impartial”.
The ruling yesterday forced the government to significantly amend its website – twice – and make moves to withdraw and cease distribution of information leaflets distributed during the campaign ahead of the polls opening tomorrow.
The Supreme Court case did not deal with the validity of the referendum which means tomorrow’s poll goes ahead but there have been calls from the No side and a number of TDs, including Shane Ross and Finian McGrath, for it to be postponed.
On Morning Ireland, Varadkar said this would not happen: “The people make the final decision on this matter and the people will make the final decision in this matter tomorrow.”
He accepted that there may be a legal challenge to the result but pointed out that there had been a legal challenge to the divorce referendum in the 90s which resulted in the McKenna judgement whose principles the government were found to be in breach of yesterday.
Varadkar said that the government had sought advice on its original information documentation from the Attorney General’s office but acknowledged that this information had been “wrong”.
“Legal advice can be wrong,” he said.
Varadkar did not directly apologise for the the government’s mistake, but said: “If the government made a mistake here in the information booklet we hold up our hands up and we accept that.”
On the same programme, solicitor and No vote campaigner Malachy Steenson said that the Supreme Court would be undermined if the referendum went ahead.
“We have moved from being a democracy to being a dictatorship because what role now does the Supreme Court have?” he said.
The Supreme Court is due to issue the full details of its judgement on 11 December.
Voting in the referendum gets under way at 9am tomorrow and polls close at 10pm. A broadcast moratorium comes into effect from 2pm today.
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I wonder would it Pass an NCT
Why it won’t be comming here….?might as well ask if its taxed
Would you really want the guys in NCT test centres putting it up on ramp
The test does not harm a car.the worst is the engine been reved highly for the emissions apart from that the test is a doddle a bit of a shake while they test the links/joints/bushes/shocks etc.
Doubt it would have to do a NCT it would be a vintage by now.
@henry,that’s right anything pre 1980 is test exempt and 52e to tax.I bring in the odd classic from the UK.easy to find a decent one and they require all vehicles to have a mot so road worthy and peace of mind its good.its a very very cheap way of having a second vehicle
Funny how it looks like the car Homer Simpsons designed.
The Homer!
It was going for only 2 million til they found a pair of Catwoman’s knickers under the passenger seat.
Holy handbags that’s alot of wonga ..poow dang wallop
I hear some joker bought it
Yeah he was two faced though
Speed bumps will be the bane of his existence now…
I see what u did there :p
Who didn’t love this car as a kid?! In fairness my favourite batmobile was the one Michael Keaton drove.
He bought it for a dollar and spent 9k dollars doing it up. Tidy profit.
According to the Independent George Barris had a mere 15 days and $15,000 to transform the vehicle into what it was. Also peculiarly the indpendent originally today said that the buyer was a 56 year old Mr Champagne revealed through Reuters, but later say that the winning bidder had not been disclosed! Odd
That’s not the original car! The original car was black with a kinda greyish whietish pinstripe. I saw it on tv when I was about 6 or 7.
That must be the one they used in the movie. That one had the orange stripe ok.
I read up about this a few years ago – apparently it was the same car but the paint job was originally a lot less dramatic, more matt-black, they repainted it the glossy block and red early on so as to look more impressive. Or so I read then…
Nikolas , I bow to your knowledge but I was really alluding to the fact that we only had monochrome TV when I was seven! But seriously though when I went to see Batman the movie I couldn’t get over the colours of things that I knew so well from the TV series. The orange stripe, the blue tinge to the batcape (which meant that the one my gran made for me wasn’t as authentic as I thought :( )
Well Bruce Wayne was stuck for a few bob seeing as Catwoman got his prints who then gave them to your man who gave them to Bane who made a mess in the stock exchange. I saw it in a movie so it must be true…
Holy nama batman
Holy God Robin!
Hold on one sec,so a car ten years old needs an annual nct but a car 30 years old cause its “vintage” doesnt?have I understood that correctly?
Yes
That can’t be right,so I can buy a banger from 1970 or so that’s falling to bits without an nct but my 99 bora needs an nct to be roadworthy?ah here leaaaavvvee irrrrrr ouhhhhh,that nct is a scam pure and simple
You’ll probably find it’s cheaper to run a 99 car than one from 1970, even with the NCT, when you consider the cost and rarity of replacement parts and how unreliable such an old car would be. But you’d have the satisfaction of laughing at the rest if us who fell for the scam.
There were eight of them I think, and three still survive. This must be one of the three.
That the first one nikolas
Is it? They made the body of the car by adapting the Futura, then made a mold of the body and created eight fibre-glass bodies, and then cars. They tended to get wrecked during filming. They all can be justifiably called original. It’s a lovely idea that there was “one” batmobile, but it’d be almost impossible to prove that this is the “original” original, given that all 8 were made from and repaired with stock parts and empty paint cans that were lying around the workshop.
Holy utility belt
have your say