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Referendum
Living abroad, but want to vote? A decision on your rights could be made in the next 7 weeks
A decision on whether to hold a referendum to allow the Irish diaspora to vote in presidential elections is to be made shortly.
THE GOVERNMENT WILL make a decision in the next seven weeks on whether to hold a referendum to allow Irish people living abroad to vote in presidential elections.
The Department of the Environment said in a statement to TheJournal.ie that Government are expected to make the decision before the “end of the of the current Dáil session”.
Voting rights
The department prepared a paper for Government, in response to the recommendation in the Fifth Report of the Convention on giving citizens resident outside the State the right to vote in Presidential elections.
The paper looks at possibly extending voting rights to Irish citizens who have emigrated or who live in Northern Ireland.
The Minister for the Diaspora, Jimmy Deenihan who is currently in the US, where he addressed the Global Diaspora and Development Forum, said that he believed that the diaspora “can meaningfully contribute to their home countries development” and that engagement with the diaspora was a “responsibility”.
He said the “Irish Government takes this aspect of our relationship with the diaspora very seriously”.
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