Unionists outnumbered in council clash over granting Irish voting rights to Northern Irish residents
Unionists have failed in their bid to thwart a motion on Irish voting rights in Belfast City Council.
The Sinn Fein motion called on the council to write to the Dublin government, encouraging it to move towards letting residents of Northern Ireland cast ballots for the election of a president of the Republic of Ireland.
The DUP and TUV both spoke against the motion, which nonetheless sailed through with support from the nationalist bloc and Alliance.
The Irish constitution limits who can vote in a presidential election to those eligible to vote in Dail elections.
The Sinn Fein motion began by asking the council to note that the Good Friday Agreement “recognises the birthright of all the people of the north to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both,” and ended by calling for a letter to be sent calling on the Irish government to extend the presidential ballot “to all Irish citizens on the island”.
SDLP group leader Seamas de Faoite said it was "frustrating that we're discussing it again because the Irish government hasn't moved on this from the last time I brought this motion in 2019".
He added that "there are plenty of countries not just in Europe but across the world where citizens who live abroad, who are part of the diaspora, in some qualified form or another have a vote in terms of the head of state".
Brian Smyth of the Greens said it was "a matter of basic democratic fairness" and that the Irish government must ensure "no Irish citizen is left voiceless".
Ron McDowell of the TUV said that people in Northern Ireland had indeed been left "without a voice" – but that was due to the Windsor Framework "and all the laws we've given away there to a foreign country".
On the subject of the motion, he said "republicanism wasn't always concerned with democratic rights – there was a time when Irish extremists would've just planted a 2lb bomb in an economic heartland and made their demands that way, or maybe even have a farmer shot to get his land instead of using this new-found love for democracy".
DUP councillor Dean McCullough called the motion "a Trojan horse".
"It talks about recognition, rights, and the Belfast Agreement, but let's be clear: it isn't about any of those things. It's about constitutional control,” he said.
"It's about extending the reach and influence of a foreign presidency into part of the UK.”
He said the Good Friday Agreement “did not authorise cross-border votes, cross-border presidencies, or cross-border allegiances".
He added that "no-one should confuse the right to feel Irish with the right to vote in a foreign election while living under the Crown" and called Belfast "a British city".
"The president of Ireland is not my head of state," he said.
"I have a head of state: his majesty King Charles III – and so do you, by the way [indicating the nationalist benches]."
He also turned on Alliance for "pulling that large, hollow, wooden horse inside the city walls".
In the end, the vote on Monday night was split between unionists who opposed the motion, and Sinn Fein, the SDLP, Alliance and Greens, with the final tally being 17 against to 41 in favour.