Sinn Fein lobbying for Belfast City Council to back extention of voting rights to Northern Ireland for Irish presidential election
Sinn Féin are to try and get Belfast Council to support voting rights for Northern Irish citizens in the election of the President of the Republic of Ireland.
The 2025 Irish presidential election must take place by Tuesday, November 11 2025.
The election will determine the 10th president of the Republic of Ireland. The incumbent president, Michael D.Higgins will have served his maximum two terms permitted by the constitution by that point.
No prospective candidate has yet received the necessary nominations for the 2025 election. To stand for election, candidates must be a citizen of Ireland, be at least 35 years of age, and be nominated by at least 20 of the 234 serving members of the Oireachtas or at least four of the 31 county or city councils.
At the Belfast City Council standards and business committee meeting last week Sinn Fein councillor Róis-Máire Donnelly forwarded a motion for debate at the full council meeting next month.
It states: “This council notes that the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement recognises the birth right of all the people of the north to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both.
“(It) recalls that, in November 2013, the fifth report of the Convention on the Constitution recommended giving citizens residing outside the 26 counties the right to vote in presidential elections.
“(It) further notes that Irish citizens living in the north can stand for, and be elected as, president of Ireland but cannot vote in presidential elections, and calls on this council to write to the Irish government and ask that they 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.”
In March 2024, a motion by a TUV councillor to stop Belfast City Hall being illuminated in green white and orange for the Irish president’s birthday failed.
Councillor Ron McDowell attempted to overturn a committee decision to illuminate city hall in green, white and orange to mark the birthday of President of Ireland, Michael Higgins on April 18 last year.
He forwarded an amendment to share the celebration of the president’s birthday with a commemoration of the closing of the gates of Derry in 1689, as well as the creation of the Apprentice Boys, and to illuminate city hall in white.