Forty-first Amendment of the Constitution (Voting Rights in Presidential Elections) Bill 2025: Second Stage [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-30
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Peadar Tóibín (AON), Meath West

I listened to the Minister of State's speech and looked at the hard copy of it here. The vast bulk of this speech - up to 75% to 80% of it - is about a topic that is not included in the Bill at all. There are a couple of reasons there is a significant problem with this. In the speech, the Minister of State mentioned emigration, overseas, the Irish abroad and the diaspora. This Bill has nothing to do with any of those people at all. They are a completely separate issue. I am not sure if this is a mistake or if it is purposeful and I will tell the House why. If someone goes to the Fine Gael website and clicks on the North of Ireland or if someone from the North of Ireland wants to join Fine Gael, it actually terms it "overseas members", so someone from Newry who wants to join Fine Gael must join as an overseas member. I mean no disrespect but I am not sure if the Minister of State wrote this. It would be better for her if she did not write this, to be honest, because this is not about the topic at hand, and if it is about the topic at hand, it is deeply disrespectful to Northern nationalists. Imagine someone from the North of Ireland listening to this - as many people are likely to be doing because this is a big issue in the Six Counties - and a Minister of State of the Government talking about overseas Irish, global Irish, diaspora Irish, emigrants, etc.,-----

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-30