Faced with a surge in births to asylum-seekers - running at about 3,000 a year - the Department of Justice is seeking to break the link that up to now has given residency to the parents of an Irish-born child, no matter where they come from. Short of a constitutional amendment, there is nothing the Department can do about the automatic entitlement of a child born here to Irish citizenship.
The issue is a political hot potato, particularly in the run-up to the elections next year. Already, it has been raised by individual representatives of the three main parties.
So the authorities are looking to other ways to reduce Ireland's attraction for asylum-seekers. Already, many asylum-seekers who have children here are being required to show they form a stable family unit. Asylum-seeker fathers have been asked to undergo DNA tests to prove their paternity.
Now, for the first time, the Department is seeking to deport some parents of Irish-born children where they have been refused right to apply for asylum. Initially, it is concentrating on recent arrivals - asylum-seekers who have not been here "an appreciable time" - such as women with new-born babies. However, other categories of unsuccessful asylum-seekers are being targeted.
The issue will be tested in at least four cases due to be heard by the High Court shortly. One case concerns a Czech Roma family who came to Ireland in March and applied for asylum. The UK authorities informed the Department that the family had applied unsuccessfully for asylum there in 1999, and had appealed the decision, again unsuccessfully.
The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, signed a deportation order to send the family back to the UK in September, but by this stage the mother was in an advanced stage of pregnancy.
In October, The Irish Times reported that the woman was rushed to hospital as she was threatened with deportation. The Garda decided not to proceed with the deportation and the woman gave birth to the couple's fourth child in November.
However, the Department still intends to deport the family, with the exception of the Irish-born child. It says this is because the family only came to Ireland in March and have therefore not been living here for "an appreciable time".
Lawyers for the family have told the High Court that the Department's stance is a breach of their child's constitutional rights to the "care, company and parentage" of their parents and siblings.
In another case involving a Nigerian family and their Irish-born son, the Department is seeking to deport the father to the UK. The couple came to Ireland last May, and sought asylum on the ground of religious persecution.
After the Department discovered that the father had lived in the UK since 1999 and had his asylum application refused there last March, the British and Irish authorities agreed to return the couple to the UK without hearing an asylum application in Ireland.
The Garda decided not to enforce the deportation because the mother was pregnant. She gave birth to a son in Galway in October. However, the Department is still seeking to deport the father, for the same reasons cited in Case A.
In the 1989 Fajujonu case, the Supreme Court ruled that the children of non-citizens had a constitutional right to the "company, care and parentage" of their parents within a family unit. The courts are usually loath to take actions which could split up a family, so how will they view the Department's new approach? Who would care for Irish-born children if their families were deported? And just what is "an appreciable time".
Ironically, the Fajujonus' senior counsel in the case was Mr Michael McDowell, who as the current Attorney General has been consulted by the Department of Justice on these thorny questions.