Frances Black (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would like to put on record my full support for Emma DeSouza and her husband Jake. What they have been through is totally unacceptable and the position of the UK Government is totally contrary to the Good Friday Agreement and they are 100% right to oppose it and I am glad to see the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste offering the Government's support, and I am very hopeful that this committee will do the same. I am also glad to see that our Taoiseach has correctly indicated that the British Government's approach is a misreading of the agreement.

It seems that the heart of this case is about preventing the automatic conferral of British citizenship. One of the suggestions made was to amend the British Nationality Act to enable this. Could the witnesses describe how that would work in practice? Should it be that in order to avoid statelessness a child born in Belfast is automatically given British and Irish citizenship, and would simply be able to say later on that he or she is solely Irish without needing to pay and formally renounce British citizenship? What are the witnesses' thoughts on that? If the issue is having citizenship at any point, how would citizenship be dealt with at birth? Should the parents choose?

If we say one needs to have some citizenship at birth, how would one be enabled to choose between them or indeed choose both? If the default is not both citizenships at birth, what should the default be? I want to get the witnesses' ideas on that, because we need a system that respects the right to be Irish, or British, or both, under the Good Friday Agreement. There is no doubt about that. I want to get an idea of how it would work in practice.