Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

Do some reading in the meantime. The aspect of our law that gives rise to this abuse is the universal entitlement of any person born in the island of Ireland, which includes its islands and its seas, to be an Irish citizen. The position until December 1999 was that under the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956, every person born in the island of Ireland was an Irish citizen. This was a matter of statute law and was something that could be changed by an Act of the Oireachtas.

In December 1999, however, this universal and unequivocal statement was changed in two respects. Most importantly from the point of view of the current proposal, the adoption of the new text of Article 2 of the constitution removed the question of citizenship arising from birth from the statutory to the constitutional level. The new Article 2 did so by creating an "entitlement and birthright" for every person born in Ireland "to be part of the Irish nation". The effect of this is generally accepted to be that each person born in Ireland, North or South, is entitled to be an Irish citizen.

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