Low poll in Ireland

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33095, 9 December 1972, Page 15

Low poll in Ireland

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

DUBLIN, December 8.

The Irish Republic today will discover the result of a national referendum aimed at promoting eventual union with Northern Ireland, but thousands of voters have already dealt a bitter blow to the Government by failing to go to the polls.

The Prime Minister (Mr Jack Lynch) had hoped for a 65 per cent turn-out of voters yesterday to approve a proposal to end the special constitutional position of the Roman Catholic Church. But only about 50 per cent of the 1,800,000 eligible recorded their attitude.

Mr Lynch hoped that a massive “yes” vote would show Protestants in Northern Ireland that the predominantly Roman Catholic republic was ready to make concessions to achieve unity. Although he is still expected to win the referendum, the low voter turn-out could add to the already dismissive stance that militant Protestants in the North have adopted towards it Political observers said that apathy, cold weather,

and a belief that overwhelming support for the Government was assured, could have combined to produce the low poll. In Northern Ireland, a bomb blast wrecked a factory and injured several people in Armagh during the night, but the province otherwise enjoyed a respite from its week of violence.

The bomb exploded without warning at a tyre factory. All the injured were hit by flying glass. The only person killed in the province yesterday was a 28-year-old Belfast Protestant, whose mutilated body was found stuffed in a box in the back of a van. Police said that the man, a leader of the Protestant para-military Ulster Defence Association . (U.D.A.) had “terrible head injuries.” He had also been shot. He was the 107th victim this year in a wave of mystery murders, most of them sectarian in nature. In London, the Prime Minister (Mr Edward Heath) announced that the British Government had officially asked the Soviet Union to help establish the origins of rockets being used by Northern Ireland guerrillas. He said that the Soviet Embassy had been given full details of an anti-tank rocket launcher, apparently bearing characters in Russian, which was discovered recently in Londonderry.