Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That is the pertinent question at the heart of this. In addition, what are Irish citizens' rights as Irish citizens? Before the EU can legislate for us, the Irish Government must legislate for us. I can apply for an Irish passport and travel around the world with it. I can move freely at present around the island of Ireland. Beyond that, however, as the de Souza case shows, the unilateral presumption by one party to the Good Friday Agreement is that, despite what the Good Friday Agreement says, its legislative outcomes and its lodging with the UN, EU and so forth, all of us born 20 years after the Agreement was signed are British until such time as we renounce this citizenship we have never held and do not want, with the greatest respect and no harm. That relates to everything Mr. Gormally just said about competing nationalities and allegiances. There is a legislative requirement, and despite what the Home Office said it is taking people through the courts. It is defying the word, letter and spirit of the Good Friday Agreement by saying all of that is well and good. The Irish Government, and I understand it up to a point, remains silent on that. We are in the middle of a negotiation and there might be a degree of sense in doing that, but there is no evidence for me or for the people who have to go through this that the Irish Government is legislating for our rights in this circumstance. It is not happening. Essentially, we have British citizenship imposed on us not just in that case but also unless there are the legislative instruments required from this jurisdiction and from the EU to protect us against it.

This comes back to Mr. Les Allamby's point. I will not be a second class citizen but a third or fourth class citizen resident in the North because of what we are seeing transpire and also because the Irish Government, which adopted all the parts of the Good Friday Agreement in the Constitution, is not legislating for our rights. I appreciate this is just one point but it is one I feel strongly about. It is one that institutions, society and rights and civic organisations here must absorb and understand.

Irish citizens in Donegal, Omagh, Strabane and Belfast are not quasi-Irish citizens or some other category but are Irish citizens whose rights are in jeopardy at present. We need the level of mobilisation we have seen from civic society in the North among civic and human rights organisations in this State that will state this is unacceptable and that the Irish Government in the context of Brexit needs to protect those people.