As voters across the State head to the polls on Friday to choose their next president, there is a large constituency who won’t be able to vote, Irish citizens living abroad.
A referendum, which would have extended the right in time for this presidential election to Irish citizens living outside the Republic, was in early planning for October 2019. However, it was shelved due to Brexit and the pandemic.
We asked readers outside the State for their views on being excluded. Many felt deprived of a say in their “home” and noted how “out of step” the State was with norms across the world.
‘Ireland is my home’
Maeve O’Rourke, who lives in England, is among many recent emigrants who got in touch. She feels “as someone who is working abroad to earn enough to buy a house back home”, she should have a right to vote on Friday. “Whoever wins the election will be my representative worldwide. I don’t agree all citizens should be able to vote, but those with clear ties to Ireland should be.”
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Sabrina Quinlan has been in Australia for three years: “I do intend to move home in the future, but the fear of what I’d be returning to is overwhelming. I wish I could vote from Australia. I may be a resident in Australia, but Ireland is my home.”
Róisín O’Riordan, based in Japan, recalls the #hometovote movement, which saw many Irish emigrants fly back for the marriage equality referendum. O’Riordan was still in Ireland at the time but says it felt like a “rallying call”.
“I can’t afford to travel 10,000km to vote in this election, but I have a strong preference,” O’Riordan says.
O’Riordan, like many respondents, saw themselves as acting as a kind of ambassador for Ireland.
“I represent Ireland in my own small way, I teach English but also act as a cultural ambassador to my students. Even some of my students were asking about Conor McGregor a few months ago, to my mortification. I care about Ireland, I want to be able to vote in things that matter, I want my voice to be heard,” she says.
Frank Gannon, who has lived in Australia since 2011, says while emigrants represent Ireland abroad, the president also represents them, as a reflection of Ireland to the world.
“I want the president to represent the values that I associate with my country,” Gannon says.
‘I feel doubly deprived’
Irish citizens based outside of the State for most of their lives also feel disenfranchised while strongly connected to Ireland.
Paris-based Patricia Nolan has lived in France for decades, since she was 25: “I never voted in a French election. Worse than that I have only ever voted once in my life when I was 21 and living in Dublin. I feel doubly deprived.
“I follow Irish news everyday and I’m proud of being Irish so why deprive me of my right to vote for my own country’s representative whose history and wellbeing I’m viscerally attached to. I feel a citizen of Utopia, where nobody votes.”
‘I get jealous of my international neighbours’
Ireland is out of step with most EU countries and many others around the world when it comes to allowing its citizens living abroad to vote. This anomaly makes the situation for more pointed for many.
Cliodna O’Flynn in the Canary Islands describes herself as a “news nerd” who gets very engaged when voting in local and European elections. But she is not entitled to vote in the general elections in Spain or Ireland.
“I do get jealous of my international neighbours from the many other non-Spanish countries who are entitled to vote in their national elections.”
Ciarán Mac Guill in Hauts-de-Seine, France, says “Other countries can manage expat voting. So why not Ireland?”. They use “expat constituencies, so local territorial representation is not disrupted”, Mac Guill says.
Irish expats have been treated “in a condescending, patronising” manner by the State for decades, Mac Guill says, adding that the State enjoys “virtue-signalling” on civil rights but is happy to be one of the only EU states that disenfranchises its own citizens.
System absurdities
Mac Guill also points to “absurdities” in the current system whereby Irish expat citizens can stand in Dáil elections and vote by post in Seanad elections.
O’Flynn tells how her Spanish-born daughter with an Irish passport moving to Ireland showed up another quirk: “She was able to register to vote in general elections in Ireland a month after she moved to Dublin to study, having grown up in Spain and voted here in general elections, a right I don’t have in either country.”
Voting rights beyond the presidency?
Minister of State for the Diaspora Neale Richmond suggested in July that “deliberate disinformation from the commentariat” had misled some to believe that extending presidential votes could also bring into play voting for the Oireachtas or local councils.
The referendum legislation published in 2019 related only to extending votes to the presidential election.
However, many Irish citizens who contacted The Irish Times would like to see the vote extended beyond the presidency.
Kevin McCafferty in Bergen, Norway, says Irish citizens should be allowed to vote not only in the presidency but general elections too.
“That is the European norm – the countries around Ireland either give their citizens votes for life, regardless of whether they live at home or abroad, or for a certain length of time after emigrating.”
Well-informed electorate
McCafferty, like many who got in touch, says he is very engaged in Irish current affairs and can follow news online easily. He says the arguments about “losing touch no longer wash”.
“After many years abroad, I’m better informed on Irish affairs than my 25-year-old son who has lived little more than a kilometre from Leinster House for the last six years. We don’t live in a world where it takes months to receive an Irish paper in the post,” McCafferty says.
Should the wider diaspora be given a vote?
As a member of the diaspora, Colette MacKenzie who was born in New Zealand, doesn’t think the vote should be extended to people like her.
“I have visited Ireland often and maintain close family ties with Irish cousins and uncles, but never lived in Ireland,” MacKenzie says. She says it “does not make sense to extend the franchise” to people like her.
She says that “citizens who may have been born in Ireland but never lived in Ireland as adults, or those who have emigrated and not been tax resident in Ireland for, say, five years, should not be eligible to vote”.
Will the referendum happen?
Extending voting rights to all citizens outside the State, including in Northern Ireland, was recommended by the Convention on the Constitution in 2013.
Despite delays, it is not off the political table. “It is my opinion, my party’s policy and it is the Government’s policy that we will introduce voting for the Irish abroad for presidential elections,” Richmond said in July.
He said there was a “major concern” a poll on giving the diaspora votes for the presidency could be defeated if held without a proper debate.
Many readers abroad did not feel assured it would happen soon.
Dublin native Brian Donnelly (65) has spent much of his life in England and would like the vote extended.
“I would be very sceptical about seeing this happen in my lifetime,” Donnelly says, adding that aside from “lip service”, many politicians have little interest in making it happen.
What of citizens in Northern Ireland?
While much of the focus of the debate on extending the vote is on Irish citizens abroad, in fact the rights of Irish citizens in Northern Ireland to vote in the presidential election would be the biggest material change of any referendum.
Belfast-based Claire Finnegan says: “I don’t know if you define an Irish person living in Northern Ireland as an Irish person living abroad ... I certainly don’t! I work in the Republic, pay taxes, volunteer in the community but can’t vote. Why not allow all Irish citizens to vote in the presidential election, after all the president represents all the people of Ireland, not the people of Ireland in the 26 counties.”
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