Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It does not matter whether they were doing it in Dublin or Derry, it was undemocratic. That has changed, but people marched for the right to vote and the establishment and the commentariat in the North thought that was outrageous. The commentariat believe now that the idea of citizens living outside the State or those in the North having a right to vote will bring about the end of civilisation as we know it. It will not. It will give a stronger voice to people whom we consider citizens of this State.

There are 196 countries in the world, and 195 of them managed to give their citizens living overseas the right to vote. We are a very small club in the Council of Europe. Of the 33 countries in the Council of Europe, only four do not give their citizens overseas the right to vote. We join Cyprus, Malta and Greece in denying those people, who are citizens, the right to vote in a parliamentary election of one form or another.

If we combine the proposal of the Minister of State, Deputy McHugh, to extend voting rights to people in the next presidential election, that is assuming their will be a presidential election, with this Bill and in terms of the one proposed on foot of the many reports, which was supported by all sides, we have a process where we are changing fundamentally the representation for those people that we seem to value only on St. Patrick's Day and then do not give them the most basic right of a citizen in any republic, namely, the right to vote. The establishment has resisted that for far too long, which is the reason we welcome the Bill. We will table amendments on Committee Stage but the fundamental principle of reforming this House is important. Doing that without another constitutional referendum is important also because we have had that debate. People want to see this House reformed and, as the Minister of State pointed out, it is not about the way we do our business here but about how we elect people to this House and, importantly, that it represents the Irish nation in its fullest sense.