Diaspora voting rights… January 9, 2019
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Wow, the IT podcasts at the end of last year were certainly the gift that keeps on giving. The format was questions from the listeners and some were excellent. One in particular that caught my attention, or rather the response, was that to a question about voting rights for citizens in the diaspora.
The panel were almost as one in arguing that the delay in any movement on this was due to ‘hundreds of thousands of SF voters in Northern Ireland’. That’s quite an admission, isn’t it?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Always been thus. Even Dev took an essentially partitionist line when he refused northern MPs admission to Dáil Éireann post-1937 despite the arguments over nationalist voters in the north being “disenfranchised”. And FF would have had the biggest benefit from any cross-border outreach.
The national parties are essentially scared of the northern political scene and its voters, whether they lean SDLP or SF. Extending the mandate to the 6 Counties will remain on the long-finger unless FF sweeps the polls there in the coming years. If it formally goes north, rather than just linking to a still extant SDLP as its local representative.
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No representation without taxation. The idea of those who have no obligation to pay, whether they live in UKNI or Dubai, is ridiculous. Moving to a taxation structure based on citizenship, would see very few people in UKNI claiming Irish citzenship.
Surely voting rights for EU citizens resident in the State, who contribute to the economy is a far more immediate question? Voting rights are currently granted to UKs resident in the State. Surely that should now be ended as they leave the EU and rights granted to our EU brothers.
Extending Dáil voting rights to hundreds of thousands of Eastern European residents & taxpayers, most of whom would be likely to vote for FG & FF, surely should be the first priority.
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I’d like to see a general right to vote in elections to all who have been resident in a country for a period of time – say 5 years. That includes those among the approximately 200,000 EU citizens from Eastern Europe that were counted at the 2016 census.
On representation and taxation: the RoI effectively taxes the whole of the EU by facilitating massive corporate tax avoidance and regulatory arbitrage. By your argument every EU citizen should have some voting rights.
If every EU citizen had a vote in RoI elections perhaps this robbery would end.
The same applies of course to Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Cyprus and Malta
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