On the 24th October 2025, Irish citizens will take to the polls and elect a new Uachtarán na hÉireann. A new president of Ireland, a head of state, and a representative of the nation at home and abroad. However, there is one group of Irish citizens living on the island who are ineligible to vote despite being full citizens of the nation and being legally allowed to run for and hold the position of president. These are the citizens of Ireland who were born and live in Northern Ireland. One of the most symbolically important parts of the Good Friday Agreement is that it grants the people of Northern Ireland the ability to claim British Citizenship, Irish Citizenship or both. Irish nationalists living in Northern Ireland can identify as Irish not just culturally but legally. Something nationalists in NI had sought for a long time.
The nature of this citizenship comes into question when one considers that it does not provide the privilege of the ability to vote for the president of Ireland. The President of Ireland is the cultural and diplomatic representative of the Irish people at home and abroad; the President of Ireland represented the nation of Ireland; that is the people of Ireland, its culture and values. So, the denial of a vote for those Irish citizens living in Northern Ireland is often felt as a dismissal of their Irishness or their belonging to the Irish nation. This is further exacerbated by the seeming lack of genuine political motivation or enthusiasm to remedy this issue. Several politicians, including Simon Harris, have spoken about the desire to extend the vote for president to Irish citizens in Northern Ireland, but little has been done to actually make this sentiment a reality. Add this to the comments made earlier this year by Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, who have historically branded themselves as the ‘republican party’, that very much suggest he does not see a united Ireland as a political priority, it is fair that Irish citizens in Northern Ireland feel left behind, forgotten and potentially abandoned.
The Republic of Ireland and Bourgeois State Building
Since its independence, the Republic of Ireland has been hell-bent on pursuing bourgeois-democratic state-building, fashioning itself in the image of its former colonial overlord and metropolitan European neighbours. Joining the ECC gave Ireland the economic support it needed to achieve this end goal. Today, in many ways, the modern neoliberal republic of Ireland is indistinguishable from its European neighbours; it is only on issues such as Palestinian solidarity that we see glimpses of the former colonised nation that understands the horrors and pain and scars of imperial oppression and colonial exploitation. It is this alignment with what one might describe as ‘first world’ neoliberalism that I would argue is at the heart of the lack of motivation and push to extend the privilege of voting for the president of Ireland to Irish citizens in Northern Ireland.
The Easter Rising of 1916, the war of independence and the campaign by republicans against the British state during the troubles were anti-colonial struggles that were firmly based in a belief in self-determination for the people of Ireland and that social justice in Ireland is not possible under a colonial occupation, which at its heart is capitalist, patriarchal and white supremacist. In a classic case of postcolonialism, Ireland, since its independence from Britain, has internalised these power structures and reproduced them in pursuit of legitimacy as a ‘modern’, ‘legitimate’ nation. The current government's dominant political parties seem to have forgotten that the independence that the Republic of Ireland enjoys was sought so that Ireland could be free of these power structures. Instead, the Republic of Ireland, rather than being concerned with social justice, climate justice and decolonisation, is totally concerned with productivity, economic growth and neoliberal priorities. The nation has forgotten that its independence was and remains partial, and that projects such as an all-island economy are not the same as emancipation.
Neoliberalism and Amnesia
How does this relate to the rights of Irish citizens in Northern Ireland to vote for the president? An Irish Government who still maintained, and embodied the emanicaptory, liberatory and ambitious spirit that formed the foundation of the movement that ultimately won the independence of the Republic of Ireland, would be always aware that this freedom was not fully achieved, it would take every measure necessary to ensure that irish citizens in Northern ireland, enjoyed every privilege of that citizenship possible unde the current arrangement set out in the Good Friday Agreement. The current error of democracy when it comes to the presidential elections in Ireland is a result of leadership that has preoccupied itself with all manner of neoliberal priorities. One that has forgotten to pay attention to its citizens, who remain under the legal jurisdiction of another state. Which, and it is positive to see, is out of step with the citizens of Ireland in the Republic of Ireland. Who continue to poll in support of a united Ireland and do not seem to have forgotten their brothers and sisters in the north, in the same way that their government has.