Sir, – Jennifer O’Connell’s opinion column, “‘Conor McGregor for president’ makes a strong argument against emigrant voting rights”, December 10th), should not forestall reasonable debate on the voting rights of Irish citizens living outside the State.
She mistakenly implies that Irish citizens overseas can be dismissed as MAGA (make America great again) supporters, “with a Tricolour in their profile and an Irish grandma with roots in ‘County Slig-go”’.
Some of the most astute commentators on Irish politics and culture over the last century have spent most of their lives abroad. In the field of literature, for example, there is James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Elizabeth Bowen, Edna O’Brien, Colm Tóibín, Emma Donoghue and so many others who have left an indelible mark on Irish culture despite their long absence.
The fact that they left the island of Ireland has not disqualified them from expressing nuanced views on the country of their birth and the subject of their fiction.
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Irish Times readers deserve a more measured discussion of important constitutional issues that affect the rights of all citizens on and off the island. Stereotypes of the kind peddled in the column are, at the very least, unhelpful. – Yours, etc,
CÓILÍN PARSONS,
Department of English,
Georgetown University,
Washington, DC,
United States.