Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the motion, which gives us the opportunity to consider citizens' rights regarding our institutions, especially citizens who do not live in the jurisdiction. Based on the terms of the Constitution, a referendum would be required. Although Senator Ó Clochartaigh expressed a doubt on that issue, to me it is very clear that the only people who can vote in a presidential election are people who are entitled to vote in Dáil elections. By definition the only people entitled to vote in Dáil elections are people who are members of constituencies among which the seats have been allocated by reference to the number of people living in those constituencies. That is the first point. Doing this would need constitutional change, which means having a referendum.

The second point is this. When I was Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, one of the things the Government of which I was a member did - I was particularly keen on this - was to end the idea of citizenship for sale and passports for sale. There was a time when people could by brandishing £500,000 come into this country, get a passport and be made citizens under a scheme administered largely by the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of the Taoiseach. This flew in the face of Article 9.3 of the Constitution, which states: "Fidelity to the nation and loyalty to the State are fundamental political duties of all citizens." It is not for sale and cannot be for sale. It cannot be conferred on people who do not owe their fidelity to the nation or loyalty to the State.

When suggesting conferring the right to vote on citizens outside Ireland, that right can only be extended to people who owe this State a loyalty. With one exception, to which I will return, that seems to apply to people who hold dual citizenship. Does a person, who is loyal to the People's Republic of China or to the United States of America, owe a duty of loyalty to the Irish State? Who resolves conflicts in that loyalty? Where do such a person's loyalties lie? There is something to be said for the proposition that if we are extending this right to people outside the jurisdiction who hold Irish citizenship in the form of a passport, it should be to people who owe this country a duty of loyalty and not to people who owe other countries a duty of loyalty.

It is also relevant that whereas we extend the right to vote in Dáil elections to British citizens in Ireland, they may not vote in presidential elections precisely because they are not citizens and the Constitution prohibits them from doing so.

The exception to which I said I would return is the Good Friday Agreement, which now has constitutional status here. In that Agreement, the State acknowledges that it is the right of anybody in Northern Ireland to consider themselves Irish or British, or, interestingly, both. From that point of view, that somebody in Belfast might have an Irish and British passport does not necessarily mean and cannot be taken to imply that he or she cannot owe a duty of loyalty to the Irish State. That is an exception and the general rule must be that in order to be eligible to vote in Irish presidential elections, if we extend the right outside the country by referendum, it should be confined to people who, I think, are citizens in the sense of owing a duty of loyalty to our State.

The next point to remember is that the President is not just some disembodied citizen living in the Phoenix Park, making pronouncements on the demise of Fidel Castro and things like that. The President is more than that; the President is part of our Parliament. It is to the Irish Parliament that the right of making laws for this State is exclusively given under the Constitution. Therefore, the President is not just some figurehead or some symbol; the President has constitutional and parliamentary duties and rights, which must be remembered. Therefore, we are not simply giving people a free vote in a kind of popularity contest - the X Factor. If we are contemplating this step we will be giving certain citizens, who live abroad, the right to vote on who should be a Member of our Parliament at presidential level. That is an important matter to bear in mind.

I think the Government's amendment is purely procrastination. These issues could be addressed in a fortnight of solid thinking if anybody bothered to do that thinking. Are we in favour of it or not? No more consideration is required. On what classes of citizens do we wish to confer this right? On whom do we not want to confer this right? Is it to be passport holders? Is it to be current passport holders? Are they an identifiable group of people? Will they need to register voluntarily? They probably would. Who will arrange all of that?

I say this in respect of the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government in particular. The Minister of State, Deputy English, came into the House to respond to my Seanad Bill and gave me every reason a Department with limited resources, which does not like having extra work imposed on it, saw difficulties with giving people outside this country a vote. In the National University of Ireland constituency for this House, I got more first preference votes than six Deputies who hold seats in Dáil Éireann.