There is a significant concern that the Government could lose a referendum to extend the vote in presidential elections to Irish citizens living abroad, the Minister of State for Diaspora has said.
Neale Richmond said he was personally in favour of giving the right to vote in presidential elections to the Irish diaspora “anywhere ... if they are entitled to Irish citizenship”.
He said it should not just be limited to Irish citizens living in Northern Ireland.
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“It is my personal opinion, my party’s policy and it is the Government’s policy that we will introduce voting for the Irish abroad for presidential elections,” said the Fine Gael TD during a visit to London.
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Mr Richmond noted the Government recently accepted an opposition Dáil motion on the issue.
“But it’s a tricky debate,” he said.
However, he complained of “deliberate disinformation from the commentariat”, which he suggested had misled some to believe that extending presidential votes could also bring into play voting for the Oireachtas or local councils.
He said there is a “major concern” a poll on giving the diaspora votes for the presidency could be defeated “if we hold this referendum without a proper debate, without a proper consultation and without letting people know what this means”.
In response to the suggestion that there was relative political unanimity on the issue, he said: “We had relative unanimity on the last two referendums [held last year on expanding the definition of the family and on references to a woman’s place in the home] and we lost those spectacularly badly.”
The Dublin Rathdown TD said he was not trying to be a “killjoy” on the issue.
“But as a politician, I don’t want to run a referendum and lose it because then you can’t have another referendum on this issue for a generation.”
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The Minister was speaking at the Irish Embassy in London at the launch of the Global Irish Survey, a Government survey of the diaspora that is available at ireland.ie and will run until the end of August.
He said the Government wanted to canvass the views of Irish people living abroad before formulating a new strategy for the diaspora; the existing five-year strategy runs out at the end of the year.
Mr Richmond said he hoped a new strategy would be in place by next April. In addition to maintaining connections with people who had recently left the Republic, he said it would also seek to “go deeper” with second, third and fourth generation descendants.
In addition to launching the survey, he was also due to hold talks with Jenny Chapman, the British Labour government’s development minister.
