it's an odd mix. I think historically the Irish had limited interaction with foreign nationals in conjunction with their own history of emigrations so remained very welcoming. They like to market themselves as welcoming country hence the national motto Cead Mille Failte = a thousand welcomes. They also have a history of open acceptance particularly, Brehon Law promoted the idea of welcoming guests unconditionally, similar to Jewish culture. The Irish can be inherently quite discriminating e.g a Dub living in Cork will always be treated different for the most part and there is open discrimination against travellers/gypys. The Irish are far more welcoming to foreigners than most countries and quite glaringly there are now Polish/Chinese/Africans with full Irish accents. I have seen this less in other European countries and it is almost non-existent in Japan. In the Netherlands for example they like to emphasis their Dutchness and your foreignness, where as in Ireland they are more accepting of integration. The UK and Ireland are far easier to integrate into, like the USA, than a lot of Europe. The Dutch, for example, have a habit of constantly correcting your grammar and speech when you try to speak Dutch. Like the French they have accents and you cannot divert from them. In English you can use any accent you have freely which makes the language more accessible.
There is a major issue in Irish culture of believing the town gossip over any representative which means misinformation roams the country like flying daggers. The referendum you mentioned was solely about removing some archaic terms from the constitution which looked down on women. It was drafted in 1919 and it's no secret old Irish society had some pretty archaic phrases for women. It should have been open and shut as it reflected the equal rights marriage granting same sex couples and home carers similar status opening the door for civil partnerships/co inhabitants to gain rights which had already been applied by previous referendums.
As per usual a low voter turnout for an open and shut referendum resulted in fringe groups voting en-mass. It is likely people were so unenthused by the mundane nature of the referendum that they didn't bother voting. It was almost entirely hijacked and misrepresented with people spouting nonsense like 'they're removing women for woke culture' and 'they're going cancel Mothers Day.' This was evident as the normal sight of celebrations at Dublin castle following referendums only featured a very small crowd of unenthusiastic far right groups. This interpretation was total garbage as it was just about bringing an old barely relied upon constitution in line with modern ethics such as acknowledging that a women's place is not automatically in the home.
They promoted a partial truth. Yeah they were removing women and mother's from the constitution but only because the established law promotes the idea that a women does not have to be the 'mother' and the father does not have to be the 'provider.' This is supposed to be painfully obvious in modern wester society that no one really took it seriously.
www.dailymail.co.uk
:quality(70):focal(1711x1094:1721x1104)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/XUS6PH6TVRHJZMKN2S5ZY7BISA.jpg)
