Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Tá mé sásta bheith ag caint ar an ábhar tábhachtach seo. The representation of the diaspora and our citizens in the North is long overdue. The appropriateness of their right to vote in presidential elections has been mentioned and included in the programme for Government of Fine Gael and Labour who talk about being a reforming Government. When the Constitutional Convention was established, the Taoiseach described it as a significant historic event in the political and democratic life of this country which put the people in their proper place at the very heart of the process because it is to them that the Constitution of our country belongs.

I attended every session of the convention except for one. It was a very uplifting process even though the convention was set up by the Government and did not go as far as Sinn Féin proposed. It did propose serious constitutional changes, including this one, which is to extend voting rights in presidential elections to Irish citizens in the North and the diaspora and those aged 16. The Government then chose to ignore it. It broke the public commitment it made. Instead, it has chosen to put to citizens a referendum on an issue for which there is no public demand or urgency, namely, reducing the age of eligibility for candidates for the presidency to 21. There is no mad rush about doing that. We have a good President at the moment and long may he live healthily. We have a significant number of people scattered throughout the world and the convention proposed that they should be accorded the vote, as should people in the North.

The failure to extend voting rights to citizens in the North, where I am from, is the result of a deeply partitionist mindset. Many people there, some of whom spoke at the convention, will feel very let down at this Government's U-turn on this issue. President Michael D. Higgins and former Presidents Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese spoke and acted as Presidents of all of this island. It is not an accident that when Queen Elizabeth II visited the North, the President was there because he is the President of the island of Ireland, not just the Twenty-six Counties, as in some mindsets. That is how our Presidents are regarded by citizens there, even those from a Unionist background.

Is féidir le ball fóirne ó Thír Eoghain, Ard Mhacha nó an Dún imirt i gCluiche Ceannais na hÉireann, agus bualadh le hUachtarán na hÉireann, i bPáirc an Chrócaigh ach ní féidir leo vóta a chaitheamh don Uachtarán. Ní raibh muintir Thír Eoghain agus Ard Mhacha in ann vóta a chaitheamh do Mary McAleese nuair a shroich siad Páirc an Chrócaigh agus í ina Uachtarán. Tá sé soiléir go bhfuil sé seo mícheart. If former President Mary McAleese had still been living in her native Belfast at the time of her election, she could not have voted for herself. Martin McGuinness could not have voted for himself. When Tyrone was playing Armagh in Croke Park, neither the President nor the players - All-Ireland competitors and All Stars - had a vote. They were as Irish as anyone in any part of the world. It is very irrational and illogical. Sinn Féin is not just looking for voting rights for republicans or Nationalists. If Unionists want to exercise that right and put forward a Unionist candidate for the presidency, they will also have the right to exercise that entitlement.

The decision of the Constitutional Convention to extend voting rights was really important emotionally because it recognised that this convention of citizens from this State recognised that people in the North were part of the nation. The nation is not the State. The nation is the nation. It is wider, bigger and arguably more important than any state. There is a unique historic opportunity to end this disenfranchisement of emigrants and to do something concrete about involving citizens in the North in the political life of this State. During the Good Friday Agreement negotiations and afterwards, I and others negotiated with the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, to allow MPs to come in here to speak on dedicated issues. They could not, of course, vote or use anything other than speaking rights, but the Government of the day reneged on that as well.

The two biggest failures of successive Dublin Governments are bound up in the failure to deal with emigration and their willingness to embrace it as a policy option for Government and the failure to end partition or even to have a strategy for ending partition. When a strategy has been devised to end partition under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, we do not even have a Government that is happy to advance that strategy and build upon it. The embracing of emigration has long been the policy of successive Governments because it is a great safety valve. Some 500,000 people out of a tax base of 2.5 million people have been forced to emigrate in eight years; 500,000 potential taxpayers are out of the place. These are bright, committed and mostly young people with significant potential who could be a bulwark against the type of social change and inequality this Government has introduced so it is little wonder it is happy to see young people scattered throughout the world.

In 1987, the late Brian Lenihan senior said that we cannot all live on a small island. Why not? It is because Government policy does not allow us all to live on a small island. The argument put forward by successive Governments to account for their failure to deliver on voting rights that citizens abroad do not have sufficient connections with their home country is disgraceful and patently untrue. This is a Government that will say it supports this and the recommendations of the Constitutional Convention and that will travel to the four corners of the world to meet the diaspora to celebrate our national feast day.

Most of the people Ministers will meet would never have left these shores had it not been for the economic policies of this Government and those of the Administrations comprising Fianna Fáil, the Progressive Democrats and the Green Party which preceded it.

If the Government were serious about bringing our emigrants home, it would give them a stake in the country in the first instance by giving them a vote. There is a new generation of emigrants fighting back. Organisations such as We're Coming Back are actively campaigning for voting rights for the Irish abroad. More than 120 other states have legislated to allow their citizens abroad to cast their votes in elections at home. Once again, we are out of line with the international trend. We all know people who have come here to live and work who vote in elections in their home countries at the appropriate time.

The Government launched its diaspora policy last week. Next week, Ministers will be highlighting it in various countries throughout the world. It must be noted, however, that they have completely abdicated any responsibility in respect of these crucial issues. When I previously challenged the Taoiseach to review his decisions, he arrogantly claimed that people would be put off - let us face it, the people are stupid - by too many referendums being held on the same day, that they would not understand what was being placed before them, that they would need more time and that, perhaps, they are not that interested in referendums at all. That is the Taoiseach's attitude to the citizens he is supposed to serve in this House.

We favour a reserved Dáil constituency for citizens in the North and for members of the diaspora. Such an approach would allow the Government to deal with voting rights, with limited disruption to the current electoral system. The Government should now drop all of its lame excuses and deliver voting rights in presidential elections for Irish emigrants, citizens in the North and those citizens aged 16 and upwards, as recommended by the Constitutional Convention.

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