The posters are up. The promises are coming in thick and fast. Internet memes have been made. The general election is scheduled for next week but some of those whose lives have been most affected by how the country has been run will not have a say.
Irish emigrants who looked at the life on offer left by successive governments at home and decided their best option was to leave are not given a vote. It could be argued the huge spike of visa applicants have already voted, just with their feet. But while that kind of vote should worry political parties and leaders as a bad grade on their report card, it doesn’t. For the simple reason that it doesn’t count come election time. Those who are most dissatisfied with how things are going to the point where they packed their bags and left do not get a ballot paper. Those with the most to say about what is and what isn’t happening in Ireland are silenced.
For years we have seen politicians explain away the resurgence of emigration out of Ireland. Don’t mind all those young doctors that the country is crying out for moving to Australia, they just want to frolic on Bondi Beach. They just want to get a tan, Instagram a sunrise and maybe experiment with acquiring a mullet. It’s definitely not the dire clinical conditions, staff rations and pay grades. It’s not the things that are within the government’s control that are driving them out of the country. Nope. Don’t be silly. They just want to join a bongo circle and maybe have an ill-advised holiday romance with a paddle-board instructor named Trevor.
[ Brianna Parkins: ‘The Irish have a natural instinct for nosiness’Opens in new window ]
Young people aren’t moving to escape the housing crisis. Sure, doesn’t everywhere have a housing crisis? Have you seen the price of property in Coogee? Oh, rentals cheaper, better quality and more easily available? And the wages are higher? And they don’t have to pay USC and their employer has to pay them at least 11.5 per cent of their salary on top of their wages into a retirement account? Shit, let’s start reminding everyone about the massive spiders then.
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It suits some people to say medical staff and other Irish workers come for the lifestyle. Lifestyle conjures up images of parties and drinks with little umbrellas in them. Not the hard truth, which is that people feel let down by Ireland enough to leave it.
Ireland has always been a country of emigrants but there’s a clear divide between those who were privileged to stay behind and those who didn’t have a choice. There are people who have the social and financial capital to get a leg up in a lucrative industry or a mate of a mate with a cheap flat going or parents could help with a house deposit. Then there are those whose circumstances don’t cushion them enough to get ahead in fundamentally flawed systems.
Those who couldn’t tolerate the failures of the State and might be the most motivated to have a say on the matter can’t. Which feels a bit convenient.
We’ve been told we can’t let Irish emigrants living abroad vote. It would open the imaginary floodgates to Maga hat wearers dying to poison Irish democracy. Millions of Irish citizens don’t live in Ireland with a good chunk of them being born abroad. If we gave everyone with an Irish passport a vote, untold damage would be done. But we don’t have to give everyone with an Irish passport a vote, we don’t have to give every Irish citizen the vote. That’s not how it works in democracies that enfranchise their citizens living abroad. There are many Australian passport holders living in Ireland who are not entitled to vote in Australian elections.
Other countries have easily applied checks and balances to protect their democracy and their eligible overseas citizens’ ability to vote. For example I could only vote in Australian elections for six years after I left the country. I could vote by post or pop down to the embassy while sniffing out the spare Tim Tams lying around the office.
Telling the Irish abroad they can’t shape a country they loved but had to leave feels wrong
If I was one of those foreign dodgy vote stealers that opponents to voting abroad are so afraid of, I would have had to sit on a 24-hour flight to Australia, live there long enough to get a proof of address, have Australian ID, get on the electoral roll, then drag my arse back to Ireland, and register as an overseas voter but only for six years. It seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to for even the most motivated bad actor.
Telling the Irish abroad they can’t shape a country they loved but had to leave feels wrong. The explanations of “it’s too hard”, or “it’s too risky” feel threadbare and lazy. The democratic equivalent of telling kids they have put those biscuits back at the shop right now or “the man” will come to take them away. Is it anonymous bad actors we’re afraid of or is it the votes of people who have hopes of coming back to a better home?