It’s been a very busy few months – I’ve had a nagging little voice telling me to spend a bit of time on ‘Playing With Dust’, but one thing or another has gotten my attention, namely work and family. However, the kids are off watching ‘Fireman Sam’, so I’ve got some time to be a responsible blogger. 
A belated New Year to you all.
Plenty of cool astronomy related stuff to blog in the short term, especially the wonderful M31 image that SPIRE and XMM produced and shown on the BBC ‘Stargazing Live’ program, but that’ll have to wait till later. Politics today, or more so Irish politics, as I’m a rather angry Paddy at the moment…
As an expatriate Irishman, I watch the events of not only the last few days, weeks and months with increasing anger. The country is a basket case, both politically and financially, and with little hope of either being sorted out in even the longest term scenario. The country is fecked, especially if the same old people end up holding the political reigns after the upcoming general election. While I have no time for Fianna Fail, and in fact detest them, I have no confidence in either Fine Gael or Labour to dig us out of the mess – nor with any of the political parties. However, the thing that really irritates me the most is that despite being an Irish citizen, I have no voice in the future political direction of my country. I am without the right to vote.
‘Huh?’, I hear you cry! Isn’t Ireland a fully developed country with full democratic rights for its citizens? It is – to a point. For those of us who are not ‘ordinarily resident’ in Ireland, we no longer have the right to vote, the argument in favour being that Irish citizens living outside of Ireland are not fully involved in the day-to-day practicalities of Irish life to be fully involved in deciding the nature of the Irish political landscape. Opponents of the rights of emigrants to vote also point out that as we are not paying Irish taxes, we also forfeit the right to vote.
However.
Many of us living outside of Ireland are doing so because we’re forced to – no employment in our field, you see. Can’t support my family on the dole. Leaving Ireland does, however, open your eyes to how badly run the country is – corrupt, parish-pump, tribal politics where TD seats are passed from father to son is a cancer which has debilitated the country since independence. The political parties know that for emigrants, the blinkers are off – and hence the extreme reluctance to allow expats to vote. The political parties fear us. Anything that’ll disrupt the status quo is to be feared by the good old boys back home.
The arguments re. lack of day-to-day interaction and taxation are straw arguments at best. It’s not the 1950′s anymore – thanks to the miracle of the Internet, we can read Irish newspapers, watch Irish TV, and are on Skype to home. The modern emigrant is plugged into home in to a much greater extent than was the case even a decade ago. It’s not like it was in previous diasporas, where apart from the odd phone call/letter and the local Irish paper you’d pick up from the newsagents in Kilburn, you really were cut off. We know what’s going on.
(As an aside, it’s one rule for them and other for the rest of us great unwashed. The then EU Ambassador to the USA, John Bruton (a former Irish Taoiseach), flew home from Washington DC to vote in the Lisbon referendum a few years back. This is actually illegal under Irish law – you can’t vote *at all* if you’re not ordinarily resident in Ireland. Of course, he got off scot free. Expats have been warned that they face arrest if they do the same. I urge any expats reading this to flout this and vote – I know quite a few who will. Alas, I can’t do the same – my name was taken off the electoral register without my consent after I moved to the US, so I’m not registered to vote in any case in my old constituency.)
As for taxes/financial input…. well, we’re sending back remittances to pay loans, mortgages and support families. Hell, as a UK taxpayer, I’m even contributing to the bailout. We’re paying for you to get out the financial crapper. So don’t even try to argue we’re asking for voting rights and offering nothing in return. The attitude of the Government and many others back home is ‘Thanks for the money, now feck off’. Well, no. We’re not going to be quiet.
I want to contribute to the political future of my country, as I have a rather large stake in its political and economic direction. I want the opportunity to raise my kids back home, and for them to have good opportunities in life if they do grow up there – I don’t want to be in the position that my mother was in, watching her son leave for distant shores. I’m an Irish citizen, and despite the incompetent good old boys who’ve run the country into the ground, I’m proud to be an Irish citizen. I just want to be able to exercise my voice as an Irish citizen in how my country is run.
No other EU country denies its overseas citizens the right to vote, now that the Greeks have been forced by the European courts to back down and give their overseas citizens the right to vote. War torn countries like Iraq and Southern Sudan allow their diasporas to exercise their democratic rights and participate in the political future of their countries. The USA allows postal voting. Why can’t Ireland? The answer, the only answer is and can be, that they fear us and that we’ll end their cozy little system of corruption and privilege. With up to 50, 000 Irish citizens expected to emigrate this year and no end to Ireland’s financial turmoil in sight, this issue will only increase in its importance for the years ahead.
I’m either an Irish citizen or I’m not. Give me my vote.
