Ten years ago Enda Kenny stood in the courtyard of Dublin Castle and said his government had been dealt a “wallop” following the rejection of the referendum to abolish the Seanad.
It is beginning to feel like a far harder hit for this coalition, who have managed to get their handling of referendums on Family and Care so spectacularly wrong.
The defeats are on course to be far greater than even the No sides had anticipated, making this more of a Dublin Castle clobbering.
The blame game is already under way.
The Labour Party, which has backed Yes votes said the Government parties had run lacklustre campaigns.
Speaking in Dublin Castle where she was met by hecklers, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said the Government “went on a solo run” and did not involve the opposition in coming up with bungled wording of both propositions.
Within the Government there is some soul searching too.
Some have tried to pass this off as a re-emergence of the conservative cohort of the electorate which had made up a minority of about a third of the electorate in recent years.
But there are so many more layers to these results than ideology.
Whatever way they try to defend it, this has been a bad day for the coalition and its party leaders, raising questions about how in touch they are with the electorate, as well as their own abilities to convince voters and competently sell a message as they head in to an electoral cycle.
