Eric Byrne (Dublin South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Nolan for her contribution. We are 40 years in the EU but the attitude of successive governments to the Irish diaspora has been disgraceful. I have recorded this view on many occasions.

I base my view on my embarrassment on realising, as an OSCE election monitor, that a very diverse range of countries, including Ukraine, Romania and other former eastern European counties, had their embassy networks open their doors to their non-resident nationals. A good reason to be in the European Union is that decisions on Irish domestic policy are pushed by embarrassment. This committee and others of the Parliament have been addressing this for quite a while. I am convinced and happy that there will be changes. However, I have a couple of questions. Ms Nolan is obviously wearing the EU representative's hat, so she is talking about 28 countries conforming. This committee must consider the wider diaspora because there are so many emigrants in America, let alone the 50,000 who are illegal. Every other American claims to be Irish. One must also consider New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, elsewhere in Africa, and many other areas. There are many such countries with a huge diaspora. How we handle this may be a separate issue but we must start by giving leadership and conforming rapidly with the EU norm. I thank Ms Nolan for highlighting this yet again. I hope that within the relatively near future we can come up with a formula to afford Irish EU citizens the right to vote in national elections.

Somewhere in the correspondence we have it is being argued that Irish students should now start engaging in the recruitment process for jobs in Europe. Would it not be ironic if they took up jobs in Europe and, in doing so, possibly lost their votes? Such phenomena are not consistent with a modern 21st-century country.