Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

My apologies to Mr. Holder for being delayed in arriving. He will see on the screen over the shoulder of Senator Wall that the Minister for Health is in the Seanad Chamber addressing emergency Covid legislation. That is where I was for the first part of the meeting. The main thing for me is getting the Committee on the Administration of Justice to take part in this meeting and into the work of this committee because I know and value the breadth of work it and the other organisations represented here today carry out. They have given the committee a tremendous amount of food for thought, even just in the last bit of the meeting that I have been able to listen to directly.

I found the discussion relating to the issue of representation interesting. The big concern for citizens in the North heading into Brexit was the loss of the franchise to the European Parliament and that is obviously what transpired. We made the case that the Irish Government could have retained two of the additional seats it got for citizens in the North but unfortunately it went a different way.

Senator Malcolm Byrne is correct with regard to teasing out the issue of referendums in the North. It is a strange situation in that respect. Mr. Holder was involved in the campaign to resist the imposition of British citizenship universally on all those in Northern Ireland. The British Government position was that all those in Northern Ireland were British citizens, regardless of the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement, but now it wants to distinguish between British and Irish in the context of future referendums, if I understand Mr. Holder correctly.

I have two questions for Mr. Holder. What can the Oireachtas and the Irish Government do on that matter with the British Government directly? Regarding broader rights and ensuring that citizens retain their rights, Article 2 of the Constitution states that it is the birthright of everyone born on the island to be part of the Irish nation. I am forever asking what that means in a tangible, mechanical, legislative sense for people born in the North. Will Mr. Holder give us a quick response on this matter, although it probably warrants a much broader discussion?