Dr. Adrian Kavanagh:

Like the UK model. The idea is that the right to vote would be in one's home constituency. Unfortunately, there is no real geography of emigration at the moment, which is probably understandable, so I could not work out whether certain constituencies are more affected and just did a very straightforward division of that 32,000 based on the population of those constituencies. Laois-Offaly was the biggest constituency in the last general election and accounted for 3.3% of the total population at that election based on the 2011 constituency so I allocated Laois-Offaly 3.3% of that total voting population. Dublin North Central was the smallest with about 1.6% so it was allocated 1.6% of the total voting population. Based on those figures, I estimated that, assuming turnout levels were the same as for the rest of the population living in the State, there would have been a range of voters. The maximum number of voters would have been an estimated 1,069 in Laois-Offaly while the minimum number would have been an estimated 521 in Dublin North Central so in most cases, one would be talking about a couple of hundred voters.

If one relates that to marginality levels at the last election, one can see that in the majority of cases, that diaspora voting population would have been smaller than the marginality level - the difference between the person who took the last seat and the person who missed out. If one looks at the extreme case of Roscommon-South Leitrim, one can see that there were 5,088 votes between the last elected candidate and the candidate who missed out. I am estimating 500. Roughly, in two-thirds of cases, this estimated number of diaspora votes would have been smaller than than the marginality level.

In cases where this estimated diaspora voting number would have been higher than the constituency marginality level, in a good number of cases such as Cavan-Monaghan, one would have had to assume that possibly 70% or 80% of those voters would have voted in a certain way. In the case of Cavan-Monaghan, if 85% of voters in the diaspora population had voted Sinn Féin, Senator Reilly might be in the Dáil rather than the Seanad.

In other constituencies, the numbers were small enough but we are looking at differences between two people from the same party. I am looking at cases like Laois-Offaly, Wexford and Cork North Central. There are three constituencies where the diaspora vote could have changed the seats in party terms at the last election, one of which would have been Dún Laoghaire.

I do not refer to the final count but the second last count. There were 147 votes between Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett and Senator Ivana Bacik. I estimated that there were approximately 735 diaspora votes. Had a significant number of those 735 voted Labour it could have changed the result. The last two candidates and in Wicklow were separated by 112 votes and in Galway West only 17 votes.

The 2011 figures seem to suggest that the extension of diaspora voting rights would have had an impact only in a handful of constituencies. That is only one example and one could consider other examples, such as the 2002 general election where there were many more close calls. I suggest perhaps the extension of voting rights to the Irish diaspora, or the Irish diaspora living in EU countries, which seems to be the issue here, would have less impact on election results than measures to increase voter turnout levels among low-turnout groups in Irish society. Implementing more voter mobilisation efforts to increase voter turnout among working-class communities or people in the 18 to 35 age group would have more impact than the extension of voting rights to the diaspora.

Notwithstanding that the EU has no rules on it, some academic political scientists suggest this will happen and it is a matter of when, not if, the EU will make a ruling on it. As the members know, the EU still regards this as a matter of national competence. The sense in some of the literature is that a case may eventually be taken to the European Court of Justice, after which states will be forced to do something. It is better to act before that than after. If and when voting rights are extended to the Irish diaspora, the evidence I cited from the UK, Italy and Croatia suggests that countries need to do it properly. We do not want a situation where we extend the right to vote to Irish emigrants abroad but only 5% are voting. The next step is to consider the infrastructure required. The obvious method would be to do it under the aegis of an electoral commission, which is a different discussion.