The Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland was approved by referendum on 22 May 2015. It makes recognition of same-sex marriages compulsory rather than optional. In March 2015, the Department of Justice and Equality published the general scheme of the Marriage Bill 2015, setting out the changes to be made to marriage law if the proposed amendment was enacted. Lawyer Benedict Ó Floinn felt the bill's drafting should have been completed before the referendum, to minimise the lacuna during which statute law is out of step with the constitution. The Fine Gael–Labour government hoped to have the Marriage Bill enacted before the Oireachtas' summer adjournment, but the constitutional change did not come into force until 29 August 2015 when the amendment bill was signed into law by the President; it had been delayed until the Court of Appeal rejected two petitions challenging the conduct of the referendum. The government stated its intention to enact the Marriage Bill "as early as possible" after the Dáil's resumption on 22 September 2015. The bill was approved at a cabinet meeting on 16 September for publication the following day.