It removed the constitutional requirement for a defined period of separation before a Court may grant a dissolution of marriage, and eased restrictions on the recognition of foreign divorces.

The bill as introduced did not propose the total deletion of a waiting period from the Constitution, merely a reduction in the required term.

The Solidarity–People Before Profit TD, Ruth Coppinger, proposed the specification of a maximum separation period that would be set by statute law, or a shorter one, or none.

In January 2019, the government announced that it would propose amendments to the bill at report stage to eliminate the waiting period and to regulate foreign divorce.

[15] The following day, Eoghan Murphy, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage set 24 May 2019 as the date for the referendum.

The "statement for the information of voters" that appeared on the ballot paper was approved by identical resolutions of the Dáil and Seanad passed immediately after the bill.

[24] Some commentators criticised the bundling into a single amendment bill of two distinct changes (removal of the four-year waiting period and recognition of foreign divorces) thus preventing voters from approving one while rejecting the other.

[31] Organisations that campaigned for a "No" vote included Richard Greene's "Alliance for Defence of Family and Marriage"[32] and Renua’s European candidate in the Midlands North-West constituency, Michael O’Dowd.

[33] Journalist Jennifer Bray suggested that opponents felt that "the race is lost and … mounting a full-scale campaign would be pointless".

[34] Denis Nulty, Catholic Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin and chair of the Council for Marriage & Family of the Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference, called on voters to "reflect deeply" and said the amendment's objective was "liberalising divorce rather than supporting marriage".

[37] The concomitant Family Law Bill 2019 was published and introduced in the Dáil on 9 October 2019; among the changes to divorce laws which it proposed were those newly permitted by the constitutional amendment, namely a reduction in the separation period from four to two years, and recognition of divorces granted in the European Union and, post Brexit, in the United Kingdom and Gibraltar.