The Labour Party leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, has called on the Human Rights Commissions in the Republic and the North to consider whether the proposed referendum on citizenship is an attempt to remove a fundamental right conferred in the 1998 Belfast Agreement.
He also said yesterday that the proposal to change Article 9 of the Constitution to restrict citizenship rights of children born in Ireland to non-nationals may conflict with the unqualified right in Article 2 to such citizenship. If the referendum is carried, these two Articles may be irreconcilable, he said.
In a letter to Dr Maurice Manning, the president of the Republic's Human Rights Commission, Mr Rabbitte argues that the proposal to restrict the automatic right of citizenship conferred by the Belfast Agreement and by associated constitutional changes would mark a unilateral change to the rights conferred under the agreement.
Mr Rabbitte suggests that the joint committee of the Human Rights Commission in the Republic and its counterpart in the North should therefore consider the issue.
The task of this committee, established under the Belfast Agreement, is to strengthen the protection of human rights in both jurisdictions and to establish a charter "reflecting and endorsing agreed measures for the protection of the fundamental rights of everyone living in the island of Ireland".
Mr Rabbitte says the committee is also designed to allow the two commissions consider the implementation and enforcement of common human rights standards throughout the island. It is also to provide an opportunity to consider cross-Border issues such as migration and racism.
He says the "entitlement and birthright of every person born on the island of Ireland . . . to be part of the Irish nation" is in Article 2 of the Constitution and is part of the British-Irish Agreement of 1998. This right is therefore "both in the Constitution and in an international agreement to which the State is a party. It therefore falls within the definition of human rights with which the Human Rights Commission should be concerned".
However, he suggests that the proposed amendment to Article 9 "would surely have profound legal consequences for the agreement and the Government's commitment to it."