Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Fianna Fáil supports the proposal of the Constitutional Convention to extend voting rights to Irish citizens abroad and in Northern Ireland for presidential elections. We must acknowledge the appointment of a Minister of State with responsibility for the diaspora, and I belatedly congratulate the Minister of State on his appointment and wish him well in his role. I want to further acknowledge that since he has taken up that role, like many Ministers for Foreign Affairs and Trade before him, he has engaged and consulted widely with the diaspora, various stakeholders, immigrant support groups and successful entities, bodies and companies which have Irish backgrounds and are very committed to Irish projects in terms of the assistance they can provide.

It is, as he said, the next step, following the initiatives of predecessors since 2004 and the various support groups put in place to help stakeholders and those who assisted the Irish abroad in various locations throughout the world. There is much to be welcomed in the policy. It is important that it was formulated in the manner in which it has been - that is, a statement of intent by Government to initiate the various issues that have been brought to its attention not only in the recent past but over many years. It probably does not go far enough. However, I accept the good faith and intentions of those who helped to bring it to this stage, insofar as they can now consult the rest of the Government and its various agencies and Departments with a view to addressing the issues that various representative groups of the Irish diaspora throughout the world have cited.

There was a call for another consultative report on extending the vote, citing complexities from legal and administrative perspectives. That may be construed by many to be disingenuous to the very group it seeks to assist. The Government has to instill more confidence in the House and, by association, the general public of its intent in this regard.

We have reservations about the proposal in the Bill to extend the vote for presidential elections to all citizens who are 16 years of age. Given that only citizens over 18 years of age can currently vote for the President, the question of the rights of citizens abroad or in Northern Ireland is separate and deserving of consideration on its own terms, without being muddled with the question of the voting age. While there is merit in reducing the voting age, it should be done for elections in Ireland before it is tried abroad.

At the establishment of the Constitutional Convention, the Government committed to respond to its various reports by way of ministerial statements to the Dáil within four months of the receipt of a report. In this case, that deadline has been missed and no Dáil debate has taken place. Instead, we have been told in the Government's new report that:

An extension of voting rights to Irish citizens outside the State would be challenging to introduce and manage. A range of issues will arise in this context, including policy, legal and practical issues. For example, a key policy issue is the precise eligibility for any extended franchise. Ireland has a large number of citizens resident outside the State and generous conditions for passing that citizenship down through the generations, including to those who have never visited or engaged with Ireland. There are also significant practical issues which must be given due consideration. The Government has decided, therefore, that the matter is to be given to the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, in cooperation with the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Minister for Diaspora Affairs to analyse the policy, legal and practical issues arising and to report back to Government.

Yet again it could be construed that the Government is ignoring the demands of Irish citizens abroad and in Northern Ireland for recognition from the Irish State. It could well be construed that the report is patronising towards many of these citizens.

Elements that are absent from the policy document published this week are the setting of targets or deadlines for reporting back so that the document's contents can be analysed and seen to be working or not. In many other reports, no matter how much we might disagree with them across various areas or Departments, there has been a commitment to adjudicate on progress at regular intervals, determine what achievements have been met and set targets. That is lacking in this report, and I ask the Minister of State to consider an extension in order to set targets, deadlines and timeframes by which some results could be analysed.

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