Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent Ireland Party)

I support the motion. The Minister spoke about the Act. The Act should be something the Government reflects on when it comes to presidential election campaigns. This motion is about having people on the island of Ireland be allowed to vote in presidential elections. I am old school. For me, there are 32 counties in Ireland, not 26. I will never change from that. Out of respect for everyone in this country, I will say that it is the island of Ireland.

In the farcical run-up to this presidential election, parties in this Dáil stopped candidates and gave direction to their members and councillors to block candidates running for the office of President of Ireland. Fianna Fáil did not even allow one of its own members to be nominated to go before its convention to run. Instead, it picked someone from outside the grassroots of the party. Fine Gael gave a direction to its councillors to block anyone who wanted to run. This sounds like a dictatorship. Now, we are going to have the lowest turnout ever in the history of the State for a presidential election. Anyone looking in here from the outside, people from all parties and none, are saying to me, that after all the years they have been doing so, they are not even going to vote. I could not believe it. People who used to carry me to vote are telling me they are not even going to go out to vote.

What have Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael done to the loyal members of their parties, the people who put them in here time after time? They dictated to their supporters that they will not give them the basic right of democracy of the choice of President. Is that what we are telling the people of Ireland? It is no wonder that we see what we see when we look at the turnout and the rural versus urban divide when it comes to voting patterns. The highest turnout for any election by percentage occurs in rural areas. That is because of the grassroots. They all came from the county one time, moved to the cities and made their lives there. The grassroots grew up with politics. They saw everything that happened, listened to all the stories and wore different colours with pride because it was the party they followed. Now, they see a mockery being made of it by the Government that is in here today.

When I look at the final couple of days of the presidential election campaign, I see the gutter stuff coming from people. They went into a candidate's past and said that they did this or that. The same Government that is going to the gutter has destroyed this nation. They destroyed their own party members. In the most recent election campaign, in the county of Limerick, Fianna Fáil was down 3,000 votes and Fine Gael was down 2,000 votes. There was a displacement of 8,000 votes but out of those 8,000, only 4,500 gave me the votes. That means 4,000 people at the previous election did not vote. There is a pattern. They do not believe any more that there is democracy in this country. That is shown today by this motion and what the Government has done. In terms of what it is trying to achieve, it forgot the grassroots. It will be reminded of that shortly.

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