Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this motion. It is brief and to the point. I have no problem with implementing the recommendations of the Fifth Report of the Convention on the Constitution, which was quite some time ago now, for all Irish citizens on the island of Ireland. I have no difficulty with that. To follow on from my colleague, Deputy Stanley, it is not in the programme for Government, which is disappointing. It was in the 2020 programme for Government. While I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, telling us the Government is not going to oppose this motion, just like somebody said, that is often a recipe for doing nothing. Perhaps at the end, the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, might tell us what the next step is, having accepted this motion. Where are we going with this? We have had many attempts before. We had the Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution (Presidential Voting) Bill 2014, which did not go anywhere. We have the Fifth Report of the Convention on the Constitution from 2013, which did not go anywhere. Now the Government is agreeing with the motion. I welcome that. Tell us what the Government is going to do for the next step. Is it a cross-party committee? What forum will there be to do it?

It is beyond ironic that we can elect somebody as President, as we all know and as has been said so many times, including former President Mary McAleese and indeed other candidates from Northern Ireland, including Martin McGuinness, who could not vote for themselves. It is unacceptable, given the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. It goes against the principle of equality and it allows us to continue to speak out of both sides of our mouth about Northern Ireland. I have gone up there quite a number of times in the past on trips relating to the Irish language, including to Carn Tóchair in County Derry and to Belfast. I toured all the Irish facilities. The strongest emotional feeling I had crossing over was that we had literally cut off our right arm with Northern Ireland. It is time to have a realistic timescale for a united Ireland. This is the first immediate step that we can take.

Regarding the broader issue of extending votes to the diaspora, while I agree in principle, there are huge practical problems which need to be teased out. I would like to see this part of the motion go ahead because it is a much easier to progress it, and then we can look in more detail at what we mean. Quite a number of articles of the Constitution are involved, including Articles 12 and 16, one about the Presidency and one about the Dáil. We also have an interesting article, Article 9.3, under which Irish citizens have a fundamental political duty of fidelity to the nation. We need to tease out what the nation as opposed to the country is and how we protect that article. While I am open in theory to extending it to the diaspora, it needs to be teased out in a manner that is respectful.

The Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, said that we must ensure this can be passed. Members of different parties said to look at the last referendum and said that we did not sell it right. I think what happened with the last two referendums was that the Government was disingenuous with the electorate, who were far ahead of us. They saw that the Government was simply not telling the truth about carers or about removing the mother from the Constitution. If you want to remove that, put in parents, but that is not what happened with both of those referendums. I thought about them carefully and studied them. I found myself with bedfellows who I would not normally be with but that did not deter me from making my decision that what the Government was doing was totally wrong in amending the Constitution under the guise of protecting carers, when it was doing exactly the opposite. One of the basic ways of protecting carers is to recognise them fundamentally in the Constitution in a separate article and then to roll out the practical steps that should be taken and, separately, address the importance of the family. Whoever is in charge of the family, whether mother, father or parents, I have no problem with that, but the two should have been addressed separately. The Government did not do that. It misled the people. They were way ahead of the Government.

They voted overwhelmingly against both referendums. Maybe the Government might learn from that to speak honestly and openly to people as to what it is doing and stop the deceit.

Further, the Government decided there was to be a referendum on the Unified Patent Court. At the time, the Government told us that was vital. I sat and listened to the Government. We were told it was vital to change the Constitution to allow for that. Suddenly, it did not matter anymore. It is gone. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle might be able to help us find out where the importance attached to the Unified Patent Court referendum has gone. We were told we had to change the Constitution to allow for that but suddenly it was put off because the Government got a bashing in both referendums.

When we go back to disinformation and distrust, it comes from governments. It is not coming from the people. The people are begging for an open honest approach. They want to trust politicians but trust is not created by the Government telling us one day that it is essential for trade, commerce and industry to change the Constitution in the context of the patent court, but the next day it is gone and does not matter anymore. There is no sign of it. A parliamentary question was recently asked by a Government TD. The reply stated that the international agreement on a Unified Patent Court had been signed and so on. It continued: "Government has committed that a local division of the Court will be established in Ireland if the State ratifies", but nothing is happening. There is no explanation other than the Government decided it was going to get another bashing. I agree with the Government it was important to change the referendum on this, but it did not do it. It sought to change the referendum on two other issues. That was completely wrong and disingenuous.

Getting back to the motion, I ask the Government to deal with the steps that need to be taken following on from the fact that it is not opposing the motion. What is the Government going to do next?

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