During the Rolling Sun book festival in Westport last month, an audience in the Clew Bay Hotel was asked: “Who here is against the referendum to extend voting in presidential elections to the diaspora?” A hurricane of hands thundered into the air. That there was an overwhelming majority opposed to the proposal was hardly earth-shattering. These were people, after all, who had bought tickets to attend a session chaired by Flor MacCarthy, the editor of The Presidents’ Letters: An Unexpected History of Ireland, and who, therefore, might be presumed to be invested in the current arrangements pertaining to the office of president.
It was less the show of hands, however, than the determined set of the faces that foretold a rocky path for the promised referendum to enfranchise all Irish citizens resident outside the State, including in Northern Ireland, for future presidential elections. Governments have been dithering about holding such a referendum for nearly as long as they sat around mooting the draining of the Shannon.
In 2013, the Constitutional Convention recommended allowing expat citizens to vote. A Bill to facilitate a referendum expired with the demise of the last government in January 2020 but was restored under the programme for the current government. Despite early signals that the plebiscite would be conducted in 2023, the Government has decided to establish another civic forum next year to further tease out the issue, pushing the referendum back to 2024. It’s a delaying move that betrays a distinct lack of confidence that an imminent poll would succeed.
Why the apprehension? A referendum on the presidency – coinciding with the marriage equality question – in 2015, which proposed to lower the qualifying age for candidates from 35 to 21, went ahead without a scintilla of the sort of soul-searching this one is generating. It failed spectacularly but even its failure passed virtually unremarked, inflicting no apparent damage on the government of the day. This time, while it could be argued that enlarging the electorate might weaken establishment parties’ dominance in presidential elections, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Green Party and Sinn Féin all support the franchise extension.
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The problem is that the measure could create constitutional blowholes all over the landscape of Ireland’s putative reunification. The North and South polling series for The Irish Times and ARINS, a joint project of the Royal Irish Academy and the University of Notre Dame, has turned the spotlight on this giant nettle in the rosy garden of the four green fields narrative. At present, article 12.2.2 of Bunreacht na hÉireann restricts voting in presidential elections and referendums exclusively to Irish citizens living in the Republic.
In the event of a united Ireland being established, Northern Ireland residents who identify as solely British would be entitled under the Belfast Agreement to retain that status but, as the law stands in this jurisdiction, they would then be ineligible to vote on any proposed constitutional change or in elections for the head of this state.
Watching the conferring ceremonies in Killarney at the start of this month when 3,500 people became Irish citizens, one might wonder who wouldn’t want to be a citizen if they had chosen to live in the State. By becoming Irish citizens, they can fully participate in the life of their adopted country. The new citizens are entitled to travel on an Irish passport, sit on juries, vote on proposals to change the Constitution, stand for election to the Dáil and take part in picking the president.
There are plenty of historical reasons why some people in Northern Ireland – Protestants and Catholics as well as neither – would say no, thanks very much. They have inherited their identities and their preferences from generations of their forebears. For many, Britishness is stamped on their DNA. The polling shows how deeply that is understood in the North, where 66 per cent of voters believe Irish citizenship should not be compulsory in a joined-up Ireland.
Mandatory citizenship
Yet nearly half of voters south of the Border say Irish citizenship should be mandatory. This attitude is far more problematic and prohibitive than any knee-jerk opposition to a new national anthem. Forcing people to swear allegiance to what they regard as a foreign state, even if they involuntarily become part of it, is cruel. If Irish history teaches us anything it is that coercion is a self-defeating bully.
There is no reason why residents in Northern Ireland who consider themselves solely British should be forced to become Irish citizens. About 300,000 UK nationals currently reside in the Republic and no State pressure is put on them to become Irish citizens. They have the choice to retain their given citizenship knowing it precludes them from the constitutional decision-making collective here. The status quo operates on the understanding that individuals who do not have full allegiance to the State may have different priorities in choosing the person who represents it as its president and in voting for any changes to the Constitution and how it shapes society.
The issue is less problematic when the migration goes in the opposite direction as the monarchist UK does not elect its head of state and it does not have constitutionally-binding referendums, making national polls a rare event. Because of its last one, on Brexit in 2016, there has been a surge in the number of British nationals applying for Irish citizenship. Much of that is because Britons now divorced from the European Union want to travel unimpeded within the bloc, but expediency is not the only motivation. Identifying with this State is a motivation too.
Last summer, movie producer David Puttnam, a former member of Britain’s House of Lords, became an Irish citizen 32 years after taking up residence outside Skibbereen in west Cork, where his participation in the community has benefited it tangibly. He said Britain had lost the values he cherished and was no longer “the country I was born into”. Ireland was his “home” now, he said.
It takes time to settle into a new home. British-identifying Northern Irelanders should be allowed time if the constitutional status of this island changes. In the meantime, bundling Northern Ireland’s Irish citizens into the referendum to extend voting rights to the diaspora is high risk. Because, if it is rejected, it will send an unwelcoming message to everyone north of the Border, regardless of creed or citizenship.