Tiocfaidh Áras lá... will vote boost SF bid?

A REFERENDUM on the right of all Irish citizens, including those in the North, to vote in the presidential election will be held next year, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.

If passed, the referendum would allow hundreds of thousands of Northern Ireland residents to vote for the Irish President – potentially creating a real chance for a Sinn Féin candidate to take the Áras.

The Taoiseach said the extension of the Presidential suffrage to the Diaspora – and to Irish citizens in Northern Ireland – will take place ‘probably in parallel with the local and European elections next year’. Those elections are due to take place in June 2019.

Brexit led to a huge spike in the number of people seeking Irish citizenship. The number of passports issued rose from 388,000 in 2000 to 670,000 in 2015 – only about half of those were passport renewals.

Mr Varadkar also said he is prepared to consider reconstituting the Citizens’ Assembly after its proven success in considering proposals that could be passed by the people in a referendum. But he said not all ideas from the Assembly had been approved by the people, citing the rejected proposals to reduce the voting age to 16 and to reduce the age at which a citizen can run for President from 35 to 21.

Mr Varadkar said he would like to see ‘a new role’ for the Assembly, particularly in the area of gender equality.

It could look at the gender pay gap, differentials between men and women on pensions, and the proportion of women on company boards. Last year, 52% of State board appointees were female, Mr Varadkar said, achieving and surpassing equality for the first time in the history of the State. ‘It could address wider questions of equality between men and women,’ he said of the Assembly.