Immigrant groups have expressed concern that proposals to clear a backlog of residency claims by thousands of non-national parents of Irish children will fail to protect the children's rights and further fuel confusion.
The criticisms follow a public announcement by the authorities yesterday on their plans to handle some 11,000 outstanding residency claims dating back to September 2001.
The new arrangements mean thousands of non-EU immigrant parents will face deportation to their native countries. While their citizen children cannot legally be deported, they will in practice be obliged to leave the country with their parents.
Applications for residency by non-EU immigrants solely on the basis that they have become parents of Irish children have effectively been cancelled.
People with outstanding applications on this basis will now be permitted instead to seek leave to remain in the State on a variety of humanitarian grounds, including their parentage of an Irish citizen.
However, this application cannot be made until applicants are notified that the Minister for Justice proposes to deport them.This change in how cases are handled follows a Supreme Court ruling last January that non-EU immigrants do not have an automatic right to reside in Ireland solely because they are parents of Irish citizens.
Until then, it had been the practice to grant residency to immigrants who parented a baby born in Ireland. It is likely that some 700 applicants who made their claims after the Supreme Court ruling will be the first to be notified by the Minister for Justice of the intention to deport them.
Ms Hilkka Becker, the legal consultant of the Immigrant Council of Ireland, expressed concern that the measures would "add to current confusion and force some parents to go 'illegal' and wait for a deportation order before they can apply for status on the basis of their children's rights".
The Children's Rights Alliance said the new approach did not meet the Government's obligation to establish procedures to ensure that the best interests and constitutional rights of Irish children are fully protected under any arrangements providing for the deportation of their parents or, effectively, the children themselves.