The State can refuse to recognise a marriage it suspects has been contracted to obtain an Irish passport, according to legal sources. If a foreign national seeks a passport on the basis of being married to an Irish citizen, and fails to get it, he or she can then be deported.
It was reported at the weekend that a west Dublin woman discovered she was being impersonated in a planned marriage of a Chinese man living illegally in Ireland.
According to the Sunday Independent the woman, who was not named, had initially agreed to marry the man, whom she did not know, but changed her mind. She then discovered that a marriage notification certificate had been issued for her and this man, using her birth certificate, and concluded that he intended to go through the ceremony with someone else using her name.
If a foreign national marries an Irish citizen he or she may apply for Irish citizenship after three years, and may then have an Irish passport. There have been allegations that such marriages are sometimes undertaken for money, to provide a passport to an illegal immigrant. The film Green Card was based on such a scenario in the United States.
The woman quoted in the newspaper claimed gardai showed no interest in her story. A Garda spokesman said when asked yesterday that the stations in west Dublin had no record of such a complaint, but that more extensive inquiries would be needed.
A lawyer who specialises in immigration and refugee law said the woman could have told the Register Office, where the marriage was to take place, that she suspected someone would attempt to impersonate her, and ask the officials there not to proceed with the marriage.
The lawyer said the normal procedure for a foreign national who has married an Irish person is to seek citizenship and a passport after being married for three years. The Department of Justice decides on applications for citizenship.
If that Department does not accept that the marriage is genuine, citizenship will not be granted. The State can then ask the foreign national to leave the country, and it would be up to the couple to take High Court action to prove that the marriage was genuine.
The lawyer said she had represented clients who were genuinely married where this was disputed by the Department. A declaration had to be sought in the High Court that the marriage was valid and the foreign spouse entitled to citizenship.
In the event of a marriage used as a basis for a citizenship application not being recognised, the Irish person would then in theory be free to marry someone else, she said. However, in practice it would be wise for him or her to seek a decree of civil nullity on the grounds of non-consummation.