Madam, - Current State policy towards illegal immigrants with Irish-born children raises many questions that I believe need to be addressed as a matter of urgency:
1. The legal position presented by the State is that it is the non-status parents that are being deported and not the children. Yet surely this constitutes de facto deportation of the child and given the often profound levels of human misery involved, any future legal determination would have to weigh the justice of this action far more on the basis of natural justice rather than on the narrow legal grounds being presented.
2. Despite this narrow legal spin, does not the recent declaration by the Minister for Justice that he would not be "blackmailed" by any deportees who would attempt to have the State take over the responsibilities for the children completely undermine this legalistic presentation and in reality suggests that it is a legal charade?
3. There is no provision in the Constitution for second-class citizenship, yet this is now what has been created by current policy on foot of a narrowly focused interpretation of a specific point of law, viz.: the State's responsibilities to non-national parents of Irish citizens.
Will the Government be taking immediate action to make provision for this stateless, disenfranchised status of citizenship by means of a constitutional amendment in order to protect its own interests from any future legal challenge?
4. The current mess is being blamed on the wording of the Good Friday Agreement, whereby all those "born on the island of Ireland" are entitled to claim Irish citizenship; surely the sensible, intelligent wording would have said "born to Irish or UK citizens" or even "born to citizens of EU states"?
5. What measures has the Government taken to ensure that the obligations that it presumably believes attach to third countries to receive, accommodate and naturalise deported Irish citizens are going to be fulfilled? Etc., etc.: I suspect the list is as endless as the State's potential liability is bottomless.
Comparisons with the taxi driver debacle are entirely apposite, with the proviso that in terms on the one hand of the human misery quotient and on the other of the potential liability attaching to the State, the resultant moral, legal and constitutional quagmire is magnified at least a thousand-fold.
What the two cases do vividly illustrate is that this State now considers the law as not so much an instrument of justice as one of power to be wielded against demonised and vulnerable sectors in society.
There is I believe one exit strategy open to the State from this act of potential self-immolation: as quickly as possible alter the wording of the Good Friday Agreement (another referendum?!), and in the meantime honour the State's obligations "to cherish equally" all those who've made it under the wire.
Until this is put in place the State's obligations to all its citizens must include those who by hook or by crook find themselves native-born citizens.
That way we can all feel more secure both from the dangers posed by a State with such an a la carte approach to justice and the law, as well as from future redress by disenfranchised citizens. - Yours etc.,
PETER WALSH, Heatherview, Greystones, Co Wicklow.