Stormont backs call for Irish Government to end democratic deficit and give Derry citizens right to vote for President

MLAs branded inaction by successive Irish Governments on the matter as a ‘flagrant disregard for the will of Irish citizens’ and a perpetuation of an unacceptable ‘democratic deficit’.

A motion was moved by Sinn Féin MLA Declan Kearney calling on ‘the Irish Government to implement the recommendation of the Convention on the Constitution with regards to voting rights in presidential elections, thereby extending the right to vote in elections for president of Ireland to all Irish citizens on the island of Ireland’.

Mr. Kearney said: “Irish citizens living in the North of Ireland should have the right to a say in the future role and influence of the Irish presidency.

"Our rights as full Irish citizens are fully guaranteed under the Good Friday Agreement and in the Irish constitution, but those rights are not being engaged. The unacceptable democratic deficit should end.

"The Irish Government should act now. There is no excuse for continued prevarication or delay.”

Supporting the motion calling for an extension of the franchise, People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll, said: “It should be uncontroversial to say that everyone living in Ireland should have the right to vote for the Irish president, but that is obviously not the case.

"Several hundred thousand Irish citizens in Belfast, Derry and across the North are being denied their basic democratic rights in elections on this island. That shows flagrant disregard for the will of Irish citizens, North and South.

"As we have heard, over 70 per cent of members of the 2013 Convention on the Constitution believed that residents in the North should have the right to vote in presidential elections, and the suggestion that people in the South do not care about the North is, frankly, nonsense.”

Sinn Féin MLA Sinéad Ennis said: “Today, in 2025, Irish citizens in the North, in places such as Newry, Belfast and Derry, cannot vote for their own president. They can stand for election as president, but they cannot cast a vote. That is a democratic deficit. It is unacceptable, and it needs to change.”