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06 Sept 2025

Constitutional change ‘long overdue’ for citizens of the North, says Aontú deputy leader

East Derry representative Gemma Brolly believes citizens in the North should be allowed to vote in Irish Presidential elections

Constitutional change ‘long overdue’ for citizens of the North, says Aontú deputy leader

Aontú Leader, Peadar Toibín pictured with Deputy Leader Gemma Brolly.

Conservative Irish republican party Aontú has recently submitted a bill to allow Irish citizens living in Northern Ireland to vote in presidential elections in the Republic. 

Under current rules, in order to vote in presidential elections someone must be an Irish citizen and normally reside in the Republic of Ireland, bar a few exceptions including Defence Forces personnel or diplomatic staff serving overseas. A change in the criteria for voting in residential elections would require an amendment to the Irish constitution and therefore a referendum would be needed.

There are currently more than one million people living in Northern Ireland not eligible to vote in the election. 

Details of the bill were announced at the party’s Easter 1916 Commemoration at Arbour Hill in Dublin on Saturday. 

Leader of the party Peadar Tóibín said the party had submitted the “39th Amendment of the Constitution (Voting Rights in Presidential Elections) Bill 2025” to the bills office in the Dáil. 

Speaking to the BBC earlier today, Deputy leader of Aontú and East Derry representative Gemma Brolly said the bill was ‘very timely’. 

She said: “This bill should have been done long before now. We feel this is very much a common sense objective. Someone in my hometown can stand to be President of Ireland and I can’t vote for them. There is absolutely no common sense to that whatsoever. We believe we are the party of common sense, we believe this is something that should’ve happened a long time ago. It is my right as an Irish citizen protected under The Good Friday Agreement to demand that and do all I can to bring that about.

Ms Brolly continued: “The power to grant this bill lies with the Dublin government. It is the Irish government that is currently preventing a whole Irish nation voting as one. The next election could be the first election since 1918 that we have been able to vote in. We believe that the government in Lenister House are very much sitting on their hands when they should be acting. They are telling one story and their actions dictate something else. It is astonishing that last year we had 809 Polish nationals who were able to vote here in the North for their own country and yet I as an Irish citizen cannot vote for the President of Ireland. I believe in the interest in democracy and equality that I and anyone else here in the six counties have as much right to vote in a presidential election as anyone else.”

Speaking on the same BBC Talkback programme Gregory Campbell, DUP MP for East Derry, described the bill as ‘outdated nonsense’. 

He said: “There are about 3 million Irish passport holders across the globe, would they all  be entitled, and would some of them if it was extended to Northern Ireland, say what about me? In GB alone there are almost half a million people who currently hold an Irish passport the same way as people in the Republic and Northern Ireland do. Would they then equally say why are we left out? You don’t hear much from any Irish nationalist parties about getting British passports for citizens born in the Republic.”

The next Presidential election will take place in October. The current President of Ireland Michael D Higgins was re-elected in 2018 after holding the office since 2011. 

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