Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have two questions for Ms McShannon and one for Dr. Kavanagh. On logistics, it has been suggested that if we extended voting rights to our citizens in the United Kingdom and did not make it possible to vote online or electronically, we could end up with people queuing for miles at our embassy at Grosvenor Square or wherever. How would voting work in practice? How would people living in Manchester, Liverpool or Birmingham, where many members of the diaspora live, get to vote? Has Ms McShannon given any thought to the mechanisms and logistics behind that?

Regarding dual-voting rights, if I was living in the UK, does Ms McShannon believe I should have a vote in Irish general elections and in UK general elections or should I have the right to choose between Dáil elections and Westminster elections? Particularly if I were living in Newry, should I have the right to vote in both?

Where would the diaspora's votes go?

Would they be for constituencies in Ireland or separate constituencies?

My next question is probably more for Dr. Kavanagh. We have heard of turnout rates among diasporas as low as 5%. France and Portugal have overseas constituencies. The French have five and the Portuguese have a European constituency. We were hoping to hear from some of their representatives, but I do not believe that will be possible in the time we have left for this work. Does Dr. Kavanagh know what the turnout is for the constituencies in question? If we were to have specific constituencies for the diaspora, we would have a very low turnout. A very small number of people would be deciding on the Deputies to be elected in their constituency. A North American constituency could have 100,000 people - the equivalent of a three-seat constituency. With a turnout of only 3% or 4%, only 1,000 people might vote for each Member, as supposed to ten times that number in this country. Have the delegates given any thought to whether this would be fair or whether we would be better off linking foreign constituents' votes with Irish constituencies?