Sir, – If you don’t live here then, in my opinion, you shouldn’t have the right to vote in our elections. Decisions made by elected representatives won’t effect you directly if you don’t live here. If you are moving abroad than you shouldn’t have the right to interfere in domestic politics. If you are abroad for 10 years you may already have citizenship of the country you moved to within even half that time. Then you would be able to vote in the elections of two countries. Madness. Keep the vote for those who live here. – Yours, etc,
LIAM DORAN
Dublin 22.
Sir, – It has been most instructive to read the commentary on proposals for the extension of voting rights to voters outside the State in recent days.
Matt Williams: Take a deep breath and see how Sam Prendergast copes with big Fiji test
New Irish citizens: ‘I hear the racist and xenophobic slurs on the streets. Everything is blamed on immigrants’
Jack Reynor: ‘We were in two minds between eloping or going the whole hog but we got married in Wicklow with about 220 people’
‘I could have gone to California. At this rate, I probably would have raised about half a billion dollars’
What is insightful is how contributors have referred to “passport holders”, “the Irish diaspora” and “the Irish abroad” in articulating their positions.
I am compelled to observe that rights flow from the position of being an Irish citizen not because one holds a particular travel document!
Reflections should, rather, focus on the definition of citizenship which flows from our Constitution and how we shape it by legislation.
Concerned “State dwellers”, rather than being exercised about “overseas voters” could concern themselves with much bigger changes coming down the track, such as how full civic rights (up to holding the office of president) are given to one million British citizens in a New Ireland.
What is simply untenable is that a citizen can hold the office of president without having the right to vote for that office.
The 2025 presidential election is imminent and immediate legislative action is required to allow as many Irish citizens to participate with, as a minimum ambition, the extension of the franchise to all citizens on the island. – Yours, etc,
CONOR QUINN,
Lisburn,
Co Antrim.