Madam, – Your newspaper carried a report of the Government’s campaign to encourage people to vote in the Lisbon referendum (Home News, August 27th). Unfortunately there are a large number of Irish citizens living outside the jurisdiction, including myself, who are denied the right to express our Irish citizenship and participate in decision-making on the future of Ireland as a nation and member in the international community.
The forthcoming referendum requires voters to be Irish citizens, aged over 18, resident in Ireland and be on the electoral register. Although I am able to meet the requirements on the first three of these criteria, I have lived in Belfast since birth in 1959 and will soon celebrate my 50 years on the planet and, indeed the island of Ireland. I have held an Irish passport since the age of 18 and have been delighted to travel abroad and brandish it when required or requested, while on holiday.
However, apart from these proud moments, I have been experiencing a growing feeling, sadly, that I am an official State anomaly, a stateless person with no rights to democratic participation in the country of my birth. It is particularly during Dáil elections and referendum votes that I experience this strange feeling. It is not quite like being rejected by your mother or father, but when Ireland goes to the polls, I find myself reduced to lovingly stroking my Irish passport and hoping that the feelings of rejection and disappointment at my exclusion will soon go away. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Mr Anthony Coughlan, director of the National Platform, EU Research and Information Centre, is mistaken in suggesting that the European Commission is acting ultra vires in entering the debate about the Lisbon Treaty (Home News, August 24th).
The Commission has a duty to defend the integrity and coherence of EU documents and policies. If the terms of the treaty (a formal European Union document, even though not yet ratified) are being seriously misrepresented to the public by either side; if areas of Union legislation or policy not relevant to Lisbon are used as arguments, and imaginary competences are attributed to the EU, in order to influence voters either for or against the treaty, then the Commission is duty-bound to correct errors of interpretation, identify irrelevancies and expose invented competences.
If such corrections seem to Mr Coughlan to be mostly directed at the No side, it may be because it is the opponents of the treaty who use most of the incorrect and irrelevant arguments. – Yours, etc,