Madam, - The Government's reasons for proposing the citizenship referendum have shifted repeatedly since it was first announced. In the beginning it was because the masters of the maternity hospitals had pleaded for constitutional change and the maternity wards were swamped with non-national mothers just off the plane in time to give birth.
Then it turned out that the masters had not said what they were supposed to have said, that the number of mothers turning up in the last stages of pregnancy was quite small, and half of them were from within Ireland anyway.
After that it was the Chen case in the EU Court of Justice - the British-based Chinese mother who had her baby in Belfast to get Irish citizenship and EU residency for herself and her daughter. Then it transpired that the Chen "decision" was only an opinion by a court officer which could be accepted, rejected, or varied by the EU court, and that it proposed that the Chens be given residency on very narrow grounds, mainly because they were very well-off and self-supporting.
Then came Mr Tkachenko, the Ukrainian oil tycoon who enquired about sending his wife to Dublin to have their baby. However, she stayed at home in the end of the day. And throughout it all the Government has failed to produce any clear, reliable figures for the number of non-national mothers with no connections with Ireland giving birth here just to get citizenship for their children. Nor has it explained why this issue is so urgent that it has to be rushed through without proper consultation and debate.
This is no way to amend the fundamental law of the State, especially on such a serious issue as the right to citizenship. It is made worse when the proposal also involves amending the Belfast Agreement without consulting the local parties to that agreement; and it raises serious doubts about whether the new category of non-citizen children which it will create will have the same constitutional rights as others born beside them in the same maternity ward.
The Government should have commissioned research on the extent of the supposed problem and whether it could be resolved by other, less drastic, means and as part of an overall immigration policy. And it should have consulted the opposition parties, the social partners and interested groups, including representatives of ethnic minorities, to see if a consensus could be reached.
Instead, it has forged ahead with a mean-spirited, divisive proposal that is likely only to cause more problems in the future.
When Government leaders pushed through an ill-prepared referendum on the Nice Treaty a few years ago, it was defeated and they had to launch the Forum on Europe to debate the issues properly before they could re-run the vote. It was a salutary lesson in democracy.
The best solution on 11th June is to vote No. Then if the members of the Government really believe there is a serious problem to be addressed, they can go away and do their homework, produce the figures and consult widely about what is to be done. As a result they might come up with a more generous and inclusive proposal than the present one. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL FARRELL, Solicitor, Parliament Street, Dublin 2.
Madam, - Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, interviewed by Patsy McGarry (Weekend, May 29th) would not say how he thought people should vote in the forthcoming citizenship referendum, or how he would vote himself. Yet he should represent one who said: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", and who taught the parable of the Good Samaritan.
This epitomises, more than any sex scandals, why people will continue to drift from the Church: because it does not publicly and passionately practise what it teaches. - Yours, etc.
MAGGIE BLACKLEY, Gurrane, Fermoy, Co Cork.