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THE CONVENTION ON the Constitution will prepare a report for the Government recommending that Irish citizens living outside of the state should be able to vote in Presidential elections.
Following two days of debate, delegates voted in favour of the proposal and also voted to recommend that Irish citizens in Northern Ireland should have similar rights. The results were as follows:
Should citizens resident outside the State have the right to vote in Presidential elections?
Should citizens resident in Northern Ireland have the right to vote in Presidential elections?
Delegates were also asked what kind of Irish citizens outside the island of Ireland should have the vote, on this issue they were more divided:
Which of these citizens living outside the island of Ireland should have the right to vote in Presidential elections?
Delegates also voted on what the defined time period mentioned above should be.
Over the course of the weekend the convention heard from academic and legal experts and were also addressed by Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness MLA who said Unionists should be included in the process.
A detailed report will now be compiled containing all of the evidence that was presented over the weekend before being given to the Government who will decide whether to hold a referendum on the matter.
The convention received submissions from Irish citizens in 64 countries as part of the process and convention chair Tom Arnold said that the importance of this issue was was “very clear throughout the entire process”.
“Following this outcome, we will now be lodging a formal report with Government notifying them of the recommendation of the Convention regarding Presidential voting rights for Irish citizens who are resident abroad, ” he said.
Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams TD said that the convention’s decision was a “significant step forward in the recognition of the equal rights of all”:
By doing so, they have also made a constructive contribution to the peace process. The issue of voting rights in presidential elections for citizens living in the north and those living abroad is an important one for all democrats, but particularly for citizens in the north.
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Children’s hospitals still only allowing one parent to all appointments is also an issue which needs to be raised.
Disgraceful nonsense!
Without the man in the first place there’d be no baby. Yet the man is treated as if he’s a pariah and given the ‘my body, I choose’ brigade, is in many cases seen as a hindrance to the future development of the child.
@AnthonyK: what exactly has the clear threat that women’s rights has posed to your small ego got to do with allowing men back into all antenatal appointements? Which is the clear point of the article, which you seem to have missed.
@AnthonyK: I really don’t see the relevance of this in relation to maternity hospital protocols. This is just your daily rant.
@Aoife Hurson: Exactly. Just having his daily rant against women.
@Aoife Hurson: What is a woman?
@Aoife Hurson: because like everything men are classes and second class citizens when it comes to kids.
Slightly off topic but our GP refuses to allow my mother to attend with my father (who is hard of hearing) for appointments. He’s a good doctor otherwise but it seems bizarre, he even has to go in person to get blood results as he can’t hear on the phone but they won’t tell my mother the results instead.
The civil service out of control forgetting they are the servants and the people their employer…
@William slevin: not the Civil Service – it’s up to the individual hospitals to take decisions here.
Those involved in the decisions would likely be medical personnel and administrative management. Employees of the HSE would be Public Servants rather than Civil Servants. Civil Servants are usually to be found roaming the corridors of Government Departments and terrorizing Ministers and their advisors.
To best honest, the hospital in Ireland are a total disgrace, they look like soviet hospitals from the 60’ specially the maternity hospital.
No equipment, no beds, food worse than prison.
@Yvon Queguiner: ahh now come on. Have you tasted prison food here?
More archaic madness. This one has a whiff of turf off it.
At least the baby gets a chance.
If women stopped going for their appointments THEN things will change!
@Marie B: Why can’t they just go on their own? I don’t understand all this furore over it
@Anna Carr: why should they?
Put the man back where he was happyest, across the road a pint and cigar.
@Fiona O’ Dwyer: You sound like a happy,well adjusted feminist Fiona,just like all the rest…
@Spud Geshletter: haha. I agree, they just get in the way lol ;)
The problem is that the people who are running the hospital have forgotten that it belongs to the patient and the closest family. They don’t want us to see them in case we see too much. They like to hide their incompetence, mistakes and of course negligence. That is the real reason I know as I lived 3 months in the hospital and Oo my, did I saw things. So unless we say enough is enough nothing is going to change
@Anne Brusher Collins – when the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser
@Aoif3 Hurson – my ego is quite large
Comments closed, comments closed, comments closed…
Why does The Journal have comments at all?
@Siobhan O’Sullivan Morrin:”@William slevin: not the Civil Service – it’s up to the individual hospitals to take decisions here.
Those involved in the decisions would likely be medical personnel and administrative management. Employees of the HSE would be Public Servants rather than Civil Servants. Civil Servants are usually to be found roaming the corridors of Government Departments and terrorizing Ministers and their advisors.”
A servant is a servant what ever title is appended to it…the servants have forgotten what they are servants to the people…
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