Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

It is not only disappointing but, I would suggest, disgraceful that, once again, we are going to have a presidential election and, once again, a significant portion of our nation will be denied the opportunity to participate. Almost 30 years after our first President from the North was elected, we still have the ridiculous situation where people from the Six Counties can run in the presidential election but they cannot actually vote. We have failed to uphold the rights of those in the North to their Irish citizenship as recognised in the Good Friday Agreement.

The truth is that the issue should have been resolved long before now. It is right that we would ask what it says to our citizens in the North when we continue to ignore repeated calls they have made for the extension of the right to vote in presidential elections; that we refuse to act on the recommendation of the 2013 Fifth Report of the Convention on the Constitution; and that we fail to act in response to an historic motion in the Northern Assembly that calls for the extension of voting rights to citizens in the North. What it says of successive Governments is that, at the back of it all, there is a sense that people in the North are not as Irish as the rest of us.

I come from the Border community. A slip of someone's pen during the time of Partition could have resulted in the same disenfranchisement of people who I currently represent very proudly in this House. It has to end. We have to move forward every single day to undo the historic wrong that was the Partition of our country. We have to start by making practical outreach steps. One of the easiest things we can do is say that our President is, as those who have held the office have proven, the voice of all of the Irish nation. Let us take the step and make sure it becomes a reality.

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