Constitutional Convention seeks emigrant views on voting from abroad
The Convention on the Constitution has launched an online survey to gather the views of Irish citizens living outside the state on voting in Presidential Elections here.
The Convention will meet again in September, when it plans to discuss giving citizens resident
outside the State the right to vote in Presidential elections at Irish embassies.
It said it has already received a number of submissions on the topic, but is seeking to gather the widest range of views.
"The Convention … is keen to ensure that as many Irish citizens as possible, particularly those
resident abroad, are made aware of the opportunity of making an input to the Convention’s
deliberations," they said in a statement.
"According to the Constitution they're still part of the Irish nation and they're still affected by a lot of decisions that are made in Ireland," said Noreen Bowden, a campaigner for emigrant voting.
"Many of them are actually paying taxes - they're paying the local property tax as well as the non-primary residence tax," she said.
The Convention does not make any decisions on its own, but instead makes recommendations to the Oireachtas on amendments to be made to the Constitution.
The online survey can be found here.
