Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to voice my support and that of my party for this amendment. I will take up where Deputy Ó Cuív left off. This does not just undermine the democratic rights of islanders. What has happened for many years is unconstitutional. This is not the first time I have said this in this House. Will the Minister of State liaise with the Attorney General to see if the practices taking place on a number of islands in the past number of elections are constitutional? I will spell out what is unconstitutional about what is happening. Under the current system, which allows returning officers to designate polling days on off-shore islands, we have the postal vote, which was discussed in respect of the previous amendment by my colleagues. The window for applying for a postal vote ceases a number of days after the order designating the polling day across the State. Many of the island communities do not know for a number of days when the actual election will take place on their islands. Therefore, they are not in a position to fill in an application form and say that on Thursday, 23 May or Friday, 14 January, they will be working away from home and are, therefore, entitled to a postal vote because they could be home on Thursday but they may not be at home on Friday because their work takes them elsewhere. A student would not know if the polling day was on Saturday instead of Thursday when they would not be able to vote on the island because they would be in college, so they are unable to apply for the postal vote.

The problem here is the lag in terms of designating the day and how that conflicts with allowing people to exercise one of the most precious and cherished rights that people have in this country, namely, the right to vote. I have said before that this Government is leaving itself wide open to a legal challenge relating to islanders who have not had the polling date designated by the returning officer in time to allow them to comply with the postal vote rules in legislation.

Outside of that, this is an antiquated system that has no place in a modern democracy. We are not talking about the Antarctic. We are talking about islands off our coast. When people on the islands become seriously ill, we have mechanisms to airlift them of the islands. We are not going around in currachs anymore, trying to bring the ballot boxes to and from our islands. This is 2015. This is about making sure that everybody has the right to cast their vote after a proper and thorough debate.

I draw the Minister of State's attention to another important election that took place in recent times in this State, namely, the presidential election. As a Chamber that holds the values of democracy and democratic debate very dear, we must look back at that debate. We all acknowledge that there was a turning point in that debate for many of our citizens after the live television debate and yet the islanders had already voted. They had already cast their votes before that debate took place. Therefore, despite the fact the debate was still in full swing and there was a pivotal moment after the islanders voted, they had no option to amend their vote. They are being treated as second-class citizens when it comes to casting their vote, which they will have cast before the debate is complete. There are many other examples, including litir um thoghchán where many of the islanders will tell one time and time again that they receive those after they have cast their vote because candidates, political parties and An Post schedule them right throughout the debate up to polling day. For many of those people, polling day has happened at an earlier stage.

This is out of date and should have been got rid of a long time ago but as we approach the centenary of 1916, that time when those before us proclaimed the Irish Republic and the right of individuals or citizens to be involved in shaping and defining that republic, it is important that we allow our island communities to play their full role and stop treating them as second-class citizens. I do not know see any valid reason in this day and age that there should be a differential in respect of polling dates on our islands compared to our mainland.

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