Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There are Bills everywhere. There is an ongoing debate on whether we can get things done through legislation and various taxation measures to reduce the incentive to hoard land, to create a punitive environment for the hoarding of land and to reduce the acceleration of land prices. That is the objective of Government. The programme for Government is the outcome of negotiations between three political parties, which is clear in its commitments. We are committed to dealing with the land cost issue and the Land Development Agency legislation is under consideration by the Government with a view to publication later in the year.

I also want to respond to the issue of a referendum on presidential voting rights for those living outside the State. The Government recently restored the Thirty-Ninth Amendment of the Constitution (Presidential Elections) Bill to the Order Paper. The date for holding a referendum will be decided once that legislation is approved by the Oireachtas. As I said earlier, the public health implications of Covid-19 may impact on the timelines for such a referendum. The Deputy is correct that the fifth report of the Convention on the Constitution supports an extension of the right to vote at presidential elections to citizens resident outside of the State, including citizens resident in Northern Ireland, and it recommended that a referendum be held to amend the Constitution to provide for that extended franchise. The programme for Government agrees with that. As the Deputy will be aware, there was the publication of an options paper in 2017, which was comprehensive and set out a broad range of options for the extension of voting rights, international comparisons, the estimated costs involved, related resource issues and many of the legal policy, administrative and logistic challenges associated with extending voting rights to Irish citizens resident outside of the State.

A referendum commission was established by order of the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government in September 2019 to inform the electorate about the subject matter of the Bill, subject to it passing through both Houses of the Oireachtas. The Deputy will be familiar with the Bill. It provides for the replacement of Articles 12.2.2° and 12.3.3° of the Constitution as well as for the insertion of a new Article 12A in the Constitution. Those amendments would extend the right to vote for the office of President to all citizens, not solely to those who are ordinarily resident in the State, as is currently the case, for elections held on or after January 2025, which is the beginning of the year in which the next scheduled election for the office of President falls due.

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