Labour Party: The Labour leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, challenged the Government to publish the legal advice available to it on the proposed citizenship referendum.
Mr Rabbitte said that the Attorney General's advice, as well as the correspondence behind the so-called "legal interpretation", should be published.
Announcing that his party would oppose the proposal, Mr Rabbitte said he took legislation seriously. "And I take the abuse of legislation seriously. I am very much aware of a broad public perception that there is a loophole in our law and that it is being abused. If that is the case, then of course there will be, and ought to be, legitimate public concerns."
However, it was fundamentally wrong that a succession of Government Ministers had been using one single statistic to try to exaggerate the size of any loophole in the public mind.
Instead of giving us true facts and figures, the Government was relying on a totally misleading mantra - the statistic that one-in-four births in Dublin hospitals last year was to non-national mothers.
Mr Rabbitte said that those non-national mothers were American, Dutch, French, German, Filipino, Russian, Nigerian, Canadian, British, New Zealanders, Australian, Japanese and more.
"The vast majority of them were living and working in Ireland in perfectly legal circumstances. The Government's referendum, and the legislation accompanying it, will not change that one iota. In other words, in the year after this referendum is passed, if it is, the number of births to non-nationals in the Dublin hospitals will also, still, be as near as can be to one-in-four.
"The difficulties of resources, staffing, accompanying health difficulties and the language will continue to exist. What, I wonder, will the Government's next response be?"
Mr Rabbitte said it was the children of women arriving late in pregnancy, giving birth for the sole reason of claiming citizenship for their child, who were the ostensible targets of the referendum.
"And not even all such women, because the legislation published by the Minister makes it clear that a child born in Ireland of a British parent will in future have entitlement to Irish citizenship, and offers no basis whatever of proof of parentage." He added that he had read that the total number of non-EU, non-national mothers arriving in late pregnancy at the National Maternity Hospital last year was 163, about three a week.
"Even if we assume that every one of them was here to try to secure citizenship for their child, is it for this we are being asked to change the Constitution?
"If this is the extent of the problem, why has no other solution been canvassed other than a change in our fundamental law? How is it that heavily pregnant women, according to anecdote usually travelling alone and often in distress, are allowed to board aircraft without the remotest comment?
"If trafficking is involved, how is it that there is no attempt to find out from the women who arrive here how the arrangements were made, and how they found out about this so-called loophole?"