DUBLIN — Mary O'Hagan knew early in her marriage that it wouldn't last, but in the land of no divorce, breaking up is so hard to do.

"There was nothing majorly wrong, but we weren't going to be life partners," she said. "It wasn't going to work."

O'Hagan, a 36-year-old Dubliner, separated from her husband in 1984, after three years of marriage. She has a baby by another man, whom she lives with and wants to marry.

That is not possible in Ireland, an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nation, unless the first husband dies or unless the people vote next year to legalize divorce.

More than seven years after Ireland rejected divorce in a bitterly fought referendum, there are signs that the political climate may be ripe for abolishing the constitutional ban in effect since 1937. Census figures released in May show that 67,000 people are separated.

In January, the new coalition government of Fianna Fail and its more liberal partner, the Labor Party, announced that another divorce referendum would be held in 1994. But it said the vote would come only after full debate and the passage of laws addressing property rights and other financial issues.

"The last time this became a national issue, there was a huge sense of threat," former Justice Minister Padraig Flynn said in releasing the government proposals on divorce last year. "Married people felt threatened. Separated people felt threatened. Women felt threatened."

Judicial separations were introduced in 1989, allowing spouses and dependent children to receive maintenance and providing for legal transfers of property.

But remarriage in Ireland is forbidden and foreign divorces or remarriages are unlikely to be recognized. Many of the legal safeguards for married couples, including court orders for protection from abusive spouses, do not extend to cohabitants.

Laws pertaining to sexuality and the family are gradually loosening. Parliament recently voted to permit vending machine sales of condoms, which were not available at all until 1979, and then only to married couples.

A vote is expected later this year on decriminalizing homosexual acts, and Parliament also has to deal with a Supreme Court decision that upheld a limited right to abortion.

John O'Connor, father of controversial rock singer Sinead O'Connor, has seen attitudes change since he became involved in the issue.