Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Seán Crowe will be taking some of the time too.

I welcome the opportunity to speak with members about the Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution (Presidential Voting) Bill 2014 which was referred to the joint committee in March 2015 following receipt of cross-party support on Second Stage.

I hope the cross-party support for a measure we have all agreed on can be found again this morning. For a long time, Sinn Féin has been campaigning for Presidential voting rights to be extended to citizens in the North and the diaspora, and for citizens in the North to be represented in the Dáil and the Seanad. The motivation for this Bill was the decision of the Constitutional Convention in September 2013 to endorse the proposal to extend voting rights in Presidential elections to citizens in the North and the diaspora. A clear majority of those who voted in the Constitutional Convention's ballot were in favour of changing the Constitution to give citizens who are resident outside the State the right to vote in Presidential elections, with 78% in favour of the proposal and 21% against, and one person being decided. There was also a clear and resounding majority on the issue of allowing citizens who are resident in the North to vote in Presidential elections, with 73% in favour of the proposal and 20% against, and 7% being undecided.

This very focused Bill is about giving effect to the Constitutional Convention's recommendation that the Constitution should be amended to allow the Oireachtas to legislate for the provision of voting rights in Presidential elections without restrictions on residency. That is the very clear point we want to make. At the moment, people are limited or blocked because of the issue of residency. I attended all but one of the sessions of the convention. It was a very good process and a very good democratic practice. We would have liked to have seen a more deep-rooted convention. I have to say that every time I attended one of the convention's events or sessions, I noticed that people were engaged. The citizen delegates had briefed themselves and were very clued-in. Some of the more serious constitutional changes, such as that relating to marriage equality, have already been enacted. The Government accepted the convention's findings in this regard before choosing to ignore them. Many people from the North who spoke at the convention feel very let down by that. The members of the diaspora with whom I am in contact, particularly in Britain and the US, also feel very let down, having made detailed and intelligent submissions on this matter.

The Taoiseach's announcement in Philadelphia that there would be a referendum was very welcome. It has subsequently been proposed that the Minister, Deputy Coveney, will initiate a process of consultation on how all of this will work. I welcome that as well, even though the process has been very slow. This Bill does not affect any of that. It does not even pretend to deal with any of it. This legislation supplements the legislative mechanisms that might arise from the Minister's consultation process. Those mechanisms will require constitutional underpinning and that is what this Bill sets out to do. I will restate time and again that this legislation relates to disqualification due to residency. The new text of Article 12.2.2° of the Constitution, as outlined in the Schedule to this Bill, would enable legislation to be enacted to allow people "without disqualification due to place of residency" the right to vote in Presidential elections. Deputy Crowe will set out our case that citizens who have reached the age of 16 should be allowed to vote in Presidential elections. We propose that these two fundamental principles, as provided for in this Bill, should be put to the people in a referendum.

Nineteen years ago, the Good Friday Agreement enshrined in law the rights and entitlements of Irish citizens in all of the Thirty-two Counties on this island. It did not give people in the North partial citizenship, second-class citizenship or a different grade of citizenship. It gave full citizenship as a birth right to those who want it. That was endorsed in the North and in the South. In my opinion, there is no reason for any unnecessary delay in extending to all citizens the right to vote for their President. On a number of occasions, we have had the anomaly of Northerners being elected to the Presidency even though they would not have had a vote if they had been living in the North. We recall the wonderful spectacle of Mary McAleese in Croke Park with the members of the Tyrone and Armagh football teams, none of whom had a vote in Presidential elections.

These are emotional issues, to a certain extent, as well as issues of rights. We are seeking to give this fundamental right to all the Irish citizens scattered throughout the world for reasons associated with nation-building, connecting and bringing people in the North and the South and the members of the diaspora together. Partition has caused huge psychological and physical hurt for people here. There is a process of reconciliation. We are not reinventing something which does not happen elsewhere. More than 120 other states allow their citizens who live overseas to vote in elections at home. Ireland is out of kilter with the international trend. I remind the committee that at times of economic difficulty, we are always quick to ask the diaspora to help by coming home and making a contribution. We are now saying to members of the diaspora in the North and across the globe that they should be given this fundamental right. My colleague, Deputy Crowe, will deal with some other aspects of this matter.