Michael McDowell's previously most famous stunt was getting up a lamp-post in Ranelagh during the last election with a poster warning the electorate of the dangers of a Ceausescu-like Fianna Fáil overall majority. A stunt widely and wrongly credited with the PDs' "triumph" in the election (the PDs actually got 12 per cent fewer votes than they got in the previous election). This present constitutional stunt is of a different order, writes Vincent Browne.
It is a cynical, opportunist exploitation of ignorant prejudice against asylum-seekers in the context of local and European elections and, as such, is racist in its effect and racist in its intent. It brings disgrace to Michael McDowell himself, to his chief cheerleader, Mary Harney, and to the Government as a whole. But not just to them.
Michael McDowell claims that, because of an anomaly in our citizenship laws, an emergency has arisen here whereby unacceptably high numbers of pregnant women, with no legal entitlement to come here, have been flooding our maternity hospitals and exploiting that citizenship loophole to get for their Irish-born children Irish and EU citizenship.
Even on the figures and information supplied by himself, it is a fantastic claim.
Two weeks ago, the Department of Justice provide an "information note" on the proposed constitutional amendment. It showed that the number of pregnant women who applied for asylum in January 2003 was 282. In the following month, the number was 257 and in subsequent months the figures were 225, 180 and 147. By October 2003, the figure had dropped to 103 and in December it was 79.
So, between January and December last year the number of pregnant women seeking asylum had dropped by 73 per cent. How does this constitute an emergency? In his Dáil speech of last week he sought to bolster his case by claiming that there was the same percentage of women asylum-seekers (58 per cent) in 2003 as there had been in 2002. As though this made one bit of difference, since the numbers of pregnant asylum-seekers dropped so precipitiously.
He went on to call on anecdotal evidence, and even this he misrepresented. He claimed that in the National Maternity Hospital there had been 203 births in 2003 which had not been booked at all or had been booked within 10 days before delivery. Of these, he claimed 163 were to non-EU nationals. He said that in the Rotunda Hospital there were 269 births to non-EU nationals. But he failed to acknowledge a proportion of these almost certainly were transferred from other Irish hospitals for medical reasons - as happened in at least 79 cases of births to Irish nationals.
In addition, according to a letter dated January 20th, 2003, the three masters of the Dublin maternity hospitals complained that, because of an anomaly in the social-welfare system, pregnant asylum-seekers were encouraged to relocate from other parts of the country to Dublin and, according to the letter: "They arrive into any of the three Dublin maternity hospitals in labour, having received no antenatal care."
So it is likely that a high proportion of sudden arrivals at the Dublin maternity hospitals are not "maternity tourists", as Michael McDowell has derisively characterised them, but asylum-seekers coming from other parts of the country.
So what is the emergency? What great crisis has arisen to require the making of an urgent amendment to the citizenship rights in our Constitution, other than the proximity of the local and European elections?
Fine Gael deserves a reprieve on this issue since its certification as brain-dead. But Labour? At the Labour Party conference the weekend before last, the citizenship stunt was described by several Labour TDs as racist but, they said, the party would later decide on what stance it would take on it. They were taking their cue from their new leader, Pat Rabbitte, who couldn't decide whether to support or oppose a proposition the party regarded as racist (although he eventually did come out against it).
The prevarication, however, was a symptom of the opportunism that is engulfing Labour. A concern to avoid what are perceived not as issues of principle but "traps", an anxiety to do nothing that might turn off its potential constituency. It is the same opportunism that encourages the party to avoid the hard decisions on redistribution, taxes, social welfare, education and health.
But that it should hesitate at opposing a proposal as cynical, as opportunist, as racist as this citizenship stunt . . .?
Michael McDowell probably thought this shabby ruse would unsettle Sinn Féin, which might be discomforted vis-à-vis its working- class electorate on the race issue. To its credit, Sinn Féin, along with the Green Party, was, unlike Labour, unequivocal from the outset. No truck with the pusillanimous compromises on all-party committees or deferrals until the autumn - outright and unambiguous opposition.
I inquired yesterday morning of the press office at the Department of Justice, Equality (some joke that) and Law Reform whether civil servants were screaming "racist pig" at Michael McDowell every time he darkened the door. The spokesperson laughed a little and said: "I am afraid I cannot comment on that." Maybe there is some hope.