DECEMBER 18 marks International Migrant's Day. As Votes for Irish Citizens Abroad (VICA) launches its Right to Vote postcard, Galway-born Seanad hopeful Barry Johnston, 29, writes about his aims for the voting system in Ireland - and how he wants it to be inclusive of the Irish abroad.
Today is the UN designated International Migrants Day. Don’t worry if you hadn’t heard of it.
It’s not one of the more high profile UN days, wedged between International Mountain Day and International Human Solidarity Day.
The hashtag for the day – there’s always a hashtag – is #migrantscontribute. And they do. Few politicians are brave enough to make this case as robustly as the evidence demands.
For the emigrant, this contribution can have to be made twice. Once in the host nation proving that you’re paying your way. And again back home, proving you haven’t abandoned those left behind.
It’s part of the deal. But Irish emigrants get an unusually raw deal on one score.
129 countries around the world – including 25 of 28 EU states – allow their citizens abroad to vote. Ireland does not.
For the comparatively brief period (18 months) you are entitled to remain on the register, you have to return to vote in person. Even Malta, so similar to us in many respects, will at least stump up for your flights.
Ahead of next year’s election our increasingly anomalous position is receiving renewed criticism both from the likes of the EU and the OECD. Since the last election alone we will have lost as many as 130,000 potential voters to emigration - the equivalent of removing the population of Mayo from the map.
Attention to the issue has tended to ebb and flow in sync with the tides of national migration. There was a surge of interest in the issue across the nineties, the consequence of organised pressure groups within the swelling emigrant population of the eighties.
In 1991 then Labour spokesperson on emigration Gerry O’Sullivan introduced a Private Members Bill on the subject. Despite being opposed by the Government on “administrative” grounds the vote was only narrowly lost.
The 1994 Rainbow Coalition Programme for Government included a commitment to a referendum and the 1996 Foreign Policy White Paper set out plans for the election of three senators to represent an emigrant constituency.
However, the proposal found little support among diaspora groups themselves – who wanted to hold out for representation in the Dail – so was eventually shelved. Fianna Fail entered government in 1997 on the back of a pledge to address the issue by the year 2000. They didn’t.
The issue might have stayed in the background had recent events not conspired to see a whole new generation of Irish disenfranchised once more.
This latest wave of Irish emigrants can keep in touch more regularly – receiving real time updates online, while taking advantage of cheaper and easier travel to return more frequently. The division between home and away is being eroded.
Having a say becomes less of a polite request, and more an assertion of a right. The past couple of years have seen a corresponding flurry of activity.
In 2013 the Convention on the Constitution backed voting rights for non-resident citizens in the Presidential elections and polling put support for reform at 85 per cent of recent emigrants and 79 per cent of Irish householders.
The following year the Joint Oireachtas Committee on EU Affairs, following criticism from the Europe, called on the Government to accept the principle of extending voting rights.
Out in the real world, the nation celebrated the advancing citizenship of LGBT people while many simultaneously bemoaned the voting limits that remained on our overseas citizens who were unable to return #hometovote.
Yet the Government’s much heralded ‘Diaspora Strategy’ failed to make even the thinnest concessions despite voting rights being the stand out issue of concern to those consulted.
This has prompted my own decision to put my name forward as an overseas candidate for next year’s Seanad election and to work with organisations like Votes for Irish Citizens Overseas (VICA) who are launching a new campaign targeting election candidates next year.
None of us underestimate the administrative difficulty entailed in updating our voting system, but neither are we prepared to accept politicians hiding behind this as an excuse any longer.
To mark International Migrant's Day, I'm setting out a 5-point proposal for how Ireland can bring its voting system up to date with the lives and locations of its global citizens
1. Extend the current 18 month period in which emigrants can remain on the electoral register to a minimum of at least one electoral cycle and allow votes to be cast overseas (In the UK this period is 15 years)
2. Beyond that, extend the right to vote in elections for the Dail to all Irish citizens abroad who are first generation emigrants (that is, who were born in Ireland and left)
3. That this be managed by a system of reserved constituencies in order not to swamp the votes of resident citizens (as happens in 14 other countries). These votes would not have a time limit
4. That all citizens abroad (including those of Irish descent who have become citizens) should be able to exercise the right to vote for the President
5. An Electoral Commission should be established in the first 100 days of the new government to begin this process
