Archive for May, 2011

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Should we appoint prominent diaspora members to the Seanad?

Monday, May 30th, 2011

Irish-American businessman Tom McEnery has made a number of suggestions about how better to engage the diaspora in assisting Ireland with its economic crisis. Mr McEnery, an author, businessman, and  former mayor of San Jose, lectures at Santa Clara University and Stanford University. He wrote an article in the Irish Times advocating greater engagement with the Irish diaspora:

It is time to think and act anew. Irish officials must implement solutions quickly, before it’s too late, redouble efforts at creating wealth in emerging companies and harness the untapped resources of the Irish diaspora.

There is much talk of this vast diaspora, but its resources are not being utilised. Until the Irish leadership sees that taoiseachs delivering platitudes and bowls of shamrocks will not substitute for meaningful engagement, it never will be utilised.

His first two suggestions are focused on economic development:

Merge IDA, Enterprise Ireland and other agencies involved in economic development into one agency, name a leader, maybe an American chief executive like Craig Barrett, and support innovation, jobs and company formation. Then measure performance, not press releases;

Put whatever resources you can muster into worldwide venture capital funds that have a link beyond the monetary to Ireland, a real eco-system, and make the creation of companies, not reports, their core product;

The most interesting of the suggestions is the last:

Instead of abolishing the Seanad, select members who serve at no salary but chosen only from the Irish diaspora. From Silicon Valley select the likes of Craig Barrett, John Hartnett, founder of the ITLG and the Wilde Angel Fund, Conrad Burke of Innovalight and John O Ryan, the inventor behind the dynamic Rovi Corporate.

Add in Maria Shriver, Gabriel Byrne, Chuck Feeney, Niall O’Dowd and Declan Kelly too. And then from across the US, Australia, Canada and globally pick more such people and use them. Don’t lose them in a jumble of compliments and forums. As I once noted, I often found more wisdom in a conversation over a pint in McDaid’s or an hour at San Jose’s Irish Innovation Center than a day of speeches at Farmleigh. Implement, implement, implement as if your future depended on it – for it surely do.

I appreciate the spirit behind this suggestion: there are many in the diaspora who are willing and able to take a philanthropic approach to Ireland, and who would surely do us much good. I also appreciate the desire for greater engagement that is driving this idea, the generosity and good will among the diaspora that it highlights, and the innovative approach that is so sorely needed in rethinking the relationship between Ireland and the Irish abroad.

But I think it’s a highly problematic idea, for the following reasons:

1. Appointing, rather than electing, more representatives to the Seanad would reinforce the undemocratic nature of that body.
2. Asking people to serve in an unpaid capacity will ensure that only those of significant means will be able to do so. Not every talented person is wealthy enough to do substantial amounts of unpaid work.
3. These kinds of appointments would reinforce one of the most fundamental distortions in Irish society: the distinction between the insiders and the outsiders. One of the keys to the way the potential for success is often unleashed in the Irish abroad is that when Irish people leave, they often find themselves less bound by the restrictions of class and connection. Recent efforts to implement top-down networks and give government greater access to the most successful of the Irish abroad are aimed at establishing a hierarchy among the Irish abroad that the establishment here understand and are more comfortable with. This is not a step forward.

All the same, we’re blessed here in Ireland, in having a large international base of people around the globe who are interested in assisting us. We haven’t got the relationship right yet, but the more ideas we can throw around the better. I believe that we should favour those ideas that move us toward greater equality and more democratic representation of all of our citizens.

Senator David Norris wants overseas voting rights in presidential elections

Friday, May 20th, 2011

Presidential hopeful David Norris, who was profiled in a recent Wall Street Journal article as he toured the US on a fundraising visit, has come out strongly in favour of emigrant voting rights – but only in presidential elections. He told the Irish Post in the UK:

“I definitely and absolutely believe that Irish people living outside of the country should be able to decide who the next President of the country is. The old saying of ‘no representation without taxation’ may apply to a general election but there is no real basis for it in terms of electing a President in this instance.�

He added:

“The Presidency is removed from Government, the executive and the area of taxation so giving Irish people abroad a voice would be a great thing, the right thing. It would keep us all organically connected and I feel very strongly that the vote should be extended to all Irish people everywhere whether they’re in Ireland or not.�

Senator Norris has spoken in the Seanad in favour of emigrant voting rights in the past. His emphasis on the issue of taxation is puzzling, however, given that

• no other developed nation besides the US taxes its expats on money earned abroad (The US required the payment of taxation on foreign-earned income long before it granted voting rights to expats – and voting is not conditional on the payment of taxes),
• the payment of taxation is not required for voting rights for Irish residents,
• some emigrants do pay taxes, and
• the requirement of the payment of taxes in exchange for a vote is a profoundly undemocratic principle that calls for a return to the time when only men of property could vote.

There is some irony in the fact that Senator Norris was visiting the US in part to fundraise for his campaign: it’s another indicator of the way Ireland and various segments of Irish society regularly seek economic aid from the diaspora. It might not be taxation, but it’s invaluable.

If Irish emigrants were given the vote in presidential elections, it would surely benefit the effervescent, high-profile Senator Norris. It’s just a shame to see even a long-time supporter of emigrant voting rights can be influenced by a perspective that would link taxation and voting in a way that  appears to hold no weight anywhere else in the developed world.

What’s happened to Fine Gael’s pre-election promise on embassy voting?

Friday, May 20th, 2011

Fine Gael’s pre-election promise regarding embassy voting in Presidential elections has apparently been forgotten.

On Wednesday, Sinn Fein TD Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin South Central) asked the following question:

The Taoiseach made a pre-election promise on political reform to give voting rights to the diaspora for the presidential election. Will the Government consider fast tracking legislation to afford a right to Irish citizens living in Ireland, but outside the 26 Counties, to participate in the election of the first citizen?

The response from Taoiseach Enda Kenny? Eight disappointing words:

“There is no legislation promised in this area.�

This despite the fact that in the 2011 general election, Fine Gael included this commitment in their manifesto:

Fine Gael will reduce the voting age to 17 and give eligible citizens the right to vote at Irish embassies in the Presidential election. If this experiment is deemed a success Fine Gael will consider extending this practice to general elections.

This commitment, while vague in its lack of specification as to who the “eligible citizens� were, was a clear signal of intent to allow voting rights for citizens abroad. Comments from politicians such as Simon Coveney seemed at the time to indicate that Fine Gael actually meant it.

The formulation of this commitment in the programme for government, however, was disappointing. In the programme, the government bounced the issue of embassy voting to the proposed Constitutional Convention, saying

We will refer to the Constitutional Convention the issue of reducing the Voting Age to 17 and giving citizens the right to vote at Irish embassies in the presidential election.

This despite the fact that there is currently no constitutional prohibition on voting rights for the Irish abroad.

Meanwhile, Ireland remains the only country in the EU with no option for emigrant voting, and the number of countries allowing their emigrants to vote continues to grow. Every week, it seems, brings news of another country committed to facilitating their expats to vote, with Haiti and Nigeria being among the latest to announce upcoming implementations of diaspora voting.

Relocation queries up, say directory enquiries

Monday, May 16th, 2011

Informal indicators of emigration trends always intrigue me – we only get formal stats from the Central Statistics Office once a year, so any numbers that pop up in the meantime are interesting, if not necessarily reliable.

From the Irish Independent comes this one:

The number of calls to 11850 directory enquiries seeking contacts for sales training is up 114 per cent in the year, adding evidence to our other entrepreneurship indicator that the spirit of enterprise is alive and well in Ireland! However, emigration is very much a growing characteristic of the nation, with relocation queries bumping up 140 per cent.

Economist calls for research on new Irish emigrants

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

The experiences of today’s young emigrants to Australia should be researched in order to understand their lives compared to the lives of earlier emigrants and those who remain in Ireland, suggests an Irish economist writing in an Australian website.

Colm Harmon, Professor of Economics at Australian National University and also at University College Dublin, notes the scale of the accelerating Irish migration to Australia:

The Irish are now the third largest migrant group in absolute terms for employer sponsored (457) visas, and proportional to our population by a large way the biggest migrant group in this category.

Ireland is sending about one-third the total numbers the UK is sending – with 20 times the population! More Irish are arriving on 457s then the total from the entire rest of the European continent.

The increase in this number year on year is about one-third more than the increase of UK or other Europeans, so the share is growing.

Professor Harmon asserts – correctly, I believe – that the future for most of these emigrants will be in their adopted country, due to the Ireland’s bleak economic prospects. He then makes two assertions I’d disagree with:

1. That these emigrants “won’t have a role” in Ireland’s economic recovery.
2. That “this may be the first Irish migrant cohort to Australia who won’t be looking over their shoulders at the old country, won’t have the sense of attachment that previous generations held.”

On the first point, I suspect we’ll be asking our emigrants for much in the future. One could say, for example, that even by taking themselves out of the dole queues that these young people have already started doing their bit for Ireland’s economic recovery. In the future, they’ll be contributing through a variety of means, as emigrants always have. I’ve heard of emigrants sending money home to support younger brothers and sisters, to name just the most direct (and traditional) channel of economic support. But in the future there will also be business networking, diaspora-related FDI, visits home, green-flag-flying, and those who will return home to transform “brain drain” into “brain circulation”.

On the second point, I’m not sure how this generation of Facebookers, Tweeters and Skypers will be any less attached to Ireland than the generations whose main contact with Ireland was a dwindling exchange of letters sent over on a slow boat.

Where I do agree wholeheartedly, however, is with Professor Harmon’s suggestion that this is an important cohort to study. He says:

If I can make one appeal, I would urge the very many successful Irish-Australians – or even Irish in Australia – to consider endowing the costs of capturing the experiences of this group through research and understanding the life trajectory of this group compared to those that came before them, and those that remained in Ireland.

I would love to see such a study, but I’d love to make it global. How does the experience of being Irish in Galway differ from that of being Irish in Beijing or Toronto or Dubai? Imagine being able to explore similarities and differences in issues of mental and physical health, longevity, happiness, family life, engagement with Ireland – you name it.

See Professor Harmon’s entire article at theconversation.edu.au.

Certificate of Irish Heritage coming… soon?

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

The government issued an update on the Certificates of Irish Heritage. The certificate is intended for those who are not citizens but who would like official recognition of their Irish affinity. The initiative was announced in June 2010 by Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin, who said at the time that the first recipients would be getting their certificates by the end of last year.

It’s emerged now that the contract for the project hasn’t been signed, although the company chosen for the project, Fexco, was announced several months ago. Current Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore gave an update through a written answer to a Dáil question. Here’s the exchange (via kildarestreet.com):

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