Madam, - The Irish Council for Civil Liberties claims (The Irish Times, May 14th) that the proposed citizenship amendment to the Constitution would reverse the basis of Irish citizenship law which has existed since 1921. This is extremely misleading.
Prior to 1998, the regulation of citizenship was dealt with in ordinary legislation. A constitutional right to citizenship at birth was included in the revised Article 2 in 1998 following the Good Friday Agreement. This was intended to ensure Irish citizenship for people born in Northern Ireland to Irish or British parents. No party to the negotiations intended this right to apply to the children of persons with no connection with Ireland. No distinction was made in the text of Article 2 between those born to the people of Northern Ireland and the children of two non-national parents.
This loophole became evident after the revised text of Article 2 had been agreed in 1998, but at that point the Irish Government felt it would be unwise to tinker with the agreed text, which had been subject to exhaustive and delicate negotiations. Considerations of peace in Northern Ireland were, naturally, placed before concerns about immigration, the volume of which was much lower in 1998. However, it is now clear that this right has been increasingly abused by people with no connection with Ireland, who are arranging to have children born in Ireland in order to acquire Irish and EU citizenship for the children at birth.
This referendum will not affect the rights of Irish citizens in Northern Ireland to confer Irish citizenship on their children at birth, as has been confirmed by the British-Irish joint declaration of April 2004. Rather, it will close a loophole in our law that has been open to abuse and bring Irish citizenship law into line with that in other European states. - Yours, etc.,
CECILIA KEAVENEY, TD, (Member of the British-Irish Interparliamentary Body), Dáil Éireann, Dublin 2.