Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)

People Before Profit says that Aontú's motion is too restrictive. The Labour Party says it was not restrictive enough. In reality, I have no problem with Deputy Paul Murphy's amendment. We are happy to support it. My concern is just to make sure the signatures could be verified.

Deputy Hearne said people died for the right to vote. They did not die for the right to vote; they died for the right to vote in a representative democracy. People in China have the right to vote. A democracy without half the people is no democracy at all. That is what we are looking at here. The fact that so many political parties have their head down in their own political campaign now and are not recognising the democratic deficit that exists in this country is a major problem. It is a significant problem, not just a theoretical one, but one that is leading to a polarisation of Irish society. If the Government parties are telling half the people in this country that they do not really care if they are not involved in this election or they do not have a horse in this field, that is fine but that is a bad message to send out. It is a message that is leading to a lack of democratic instincts among a small minority. That is dangerous for this country and for this democracy.

Some people say that the right to vote should be afforded to Irish citizens living elsewhere in the world. I have no problem with that, but that is a different question. The right of a person to vote in Enniskillen, Newry or Derry is a different question to an Irish citizen voting in Shanghai, Johannesburg or San Francisco. These are Irish citizens living in Ireland and they should have a right to vote as a result. This has to be the last presidential election where Irish citizens in the North are excluded. It has to be the end of a two-tiered citizenship in this country. We must not have a situation where one section of Irish citizens is more equal than others. This has to be the last presidential election where candidates are blocked by the political establishment. It has to be the end of a curated ballot that is controlled by a handful of establishment parties. We cannot let the political establishment engineer elections that exclude voters and then come back into the system and say it is shocking that half the people have not voted. No one should be entitled to get on the ballot. We fully agree with that, but the threshold needs to be reduced.

I welcome that the Government is not opposing this motion, but it now has a democratic onus to implement it. We cannot have a situation where this Chamber votes to support the motion and it is ignored by the Government for the next ten years. I often say the best way for the Government to say "No" is to actually say "Yes". Every day, we see TDs from the Government parties going out to the gates and putting their arms around people involved in different campaigns, getting into photographs with them, telling them "Yes" and then coming in here and either voting against their interests or just ignoring the issue altogether. The Minister, Deputy James Browne, mentioned a number of difficult steps that might be taken.

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