The High Court has been asked to allow a judicial inquiry into what constitutes a family as set out in the Constitution.
Mr Justice Smyth was told yesterday in a judicial review application that the Irish (as Gaeilge) version of the Constitution specifically referred in Article 41 to the family as "an teaghlach", which means household.
Dr Michael Forde SC, counsel for two Polish Roma (Roma gypsies), argued that, as grandparents of a child born and living in Ireland with their son and daughter-in-law, they were entitled to refugee status in the State as part of the family.
He told Mr Justice Smyth that the applicants, Jreneusz and Wiestawa Olenczuk, currently lived with their son and daughter-in-law and their grandchild in The Nurseries, Mulhuddart, Co Dublin, as one household. They are opposing a deportation order by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform.
Dr Forde said the Supreme Court had held that a child of a family was entitled to the society and care of its parents and, consequently, if the Minister wanted to deport the parents he had to give specific reasons for doing so.
He submitted that the same logic applied to grandparents where the grandparents were part of the family or household. The term "family" had never been defined by the courts in Ireland and he was seeking to be allowed to argue that certain members of the extended family were "family".
The grandparents concerned in the proceedings lived with their son and daughter-in-law and grandchild and he felt they had an arguable case to be considered family.
He said the Minister had stated he was satisfied that the interests of public policy and the common good in maintaining the integrity of the asylum and immigration systems outweighed such features in the couple's application as might tend to support their being granted leave to remain in Ireland.
If the applicants were not part of a family, these would be regarded as sufficient reasons for deporting them, but if the court was to hold that the grandparents were family, then the Minister would have to give specific reasons for their deportation, which might then be challenged in law.
Referring to a Council of Europe dossier on gypsies and Travellers, he said it stated that the family group was generally the extended family, which included several married couples with their children and various generations.
The document stated that the family played a large role in the life of the Roma and the family satisfied every need. Raising the children was handled mainly by the mother, but the entire extended family took a part in it as well. While a child would live among three or even four generations, his or her socialisation would take place in the cohesive family company. An individual Roma household was a family consisting usually of three generations of six to 15 relatives, and loyalty to the family was maintained at all costs.
Mr Justice Smyth asked where the family circle might be drawn and if grand-aunts and grand-uncles and cousins twice and three times removed were to be included as family. There had to be some form of definition.
"Supposing, for instance, that the parents of a child abandon it and it is reared by its grandparents, then is the child and its grandparents the family?" Dr Forde asked.
Care for the extended family was one of the virtues which Irish people, along with Italians and Jews, retained and which other societies, such as in Britain, had abandoned. Across the water members of the family, if they were young, were put into care and if aged they were put into homes for the old.He said it would have to be argued if the often-referred-to nuclear family was confined exclusively to a married couple and their child or children or if, as stated in the Constitution, it referred to an teaghlach or household.
The judge said the application for a judicial review included matters which would have various ramifications. He was being asked to permit an inquiry into what constituted a family and would reserve judgment.