The Cabinet has approved plans for a divorce referendum to be held on Friday 24 May to coincide with the local and European elections.

Voters will be asked if they wish to remove the four-year minimum living apart period from the Constitution. This would allow a reduced term to be defined by legislation. The original proposal was to enshrine a new two-year wait in the Constitution, meaning the Oireachtas would not have the power to reduce it further.

Under the Constitution, a court can grant a dissolution of marriage if the spouses have lived apart from one another for a period of, or periods amounting to, at least four years during the previous five years. Couples can, in the meantime, legally separate.

The referendum will also ask voters if they want to change the constitutional position on foreign divorces. The referendum will propose deleting the section of the constitution that does not recognise a divorce registered outside the country. It would be replaced with a wording that would allow for a change in the law to recognise the “dissolution of a marriage granted under the civil law of another state”.