{"id":425763,"date":"2026-04-30T20:18:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T20:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/425763\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T20:18:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T20:18:07","slug":"govt-will-not-oppose-bill-to-extend-aras-vote-to-ni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/425763\/","title":{"rendered":"Govt will not oppose bill to extend \u00c1ras vote to NI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Government has said it will not oppose Aont\u00fa&#8217;s bill which would extend voting rights for Irish presidential elections to all Irish citizens living in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n<p>Aont\u00fa presented its Forty-first Amendment of the Constitution (Voting Rights in Presidential Elections) Bill 2025 for second stage this evening in the D\u00e1il.<\/p>\n<p>Party leader Peadar T\u00f3ib\u00edn said that the bill would extend &#8220;the democratic franchise, the right to vote, to all Irish citizens across the country in presidential elections&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is no small thing at all. Enfranchising one million Irish citizens is massively important,&#8221; Mr T\u00f3ib\u00edn said.<\/p>\n<p>The last time something on this scale happened was 1918, he added.<\/p>\n<p>Refusing the right to vote for Irish citizens in Northern Ireland is &#8220;a massive attack&#8221; on democratic rights, he claimed.<\/p>\n<p>Mr T\u00f3ib\u00edn lauded &#8220;the sheer joy&#8221; allowing them to vote in presidential elections would create.<\/p>\n<p>Minister of State at the Department of Public Expenditure Emer Higgins said the Government would not oppose the bill, and would keep the matter under review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government has said it will not oppose Aont\u00fa&#8217;s bill which would extend voting rights for Irish presidential&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-425763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}