Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)

The Green Party supports the amendment to put the citizenship proposal before the All-Party Committee on the Constitution. The Minister should not be too worried about the position of the Opposition parties in that regard. The Green Party's call to reject the Government proposal was contingent on the Government's determination to proceed at the local and European elections and on the need for a wider debate. If we could have a wider debate, all bets would be off and the Minister might get the consensus he sought.

The Green Party and the majority of Irish citizens support a managed, fair, transparent and rights-based immigration regime. This applies to any essential reforms of our system which might have implications for immigration and citizenship. There is popular recognition that our system is in need of attention. However, the debate on proposals for change must be based on facts. Any change to policy must be strictly evidence based. My party believes that the best way to ensure this debate is conducted on the basis of facts and with a view to an exhaustive and rigorous examination of all the implications arising from the Government's proposals, including those for the Good Friday Agreement, is to refer this matter at once to the Oireachtas All-Party Committee on the Constitution.

The Taoiseach and the Government must recognise the need for such a debate. There is a widely held view that the Government's determination to hold the citizenship referendum on the date of the local and European elections is based on cynical electoral calculations through Fianna Fáil research, which highlights the importance of immigration as an issue among the electorate. I put it to the Government parties that if they are sincere in their determination to conduct a reasoned debate on these issues, they should join us in condemning the election candidate in the Dublin area who has already issued a leaflet containing a deliberate misrepresentation of the Opposition parties' position, which is calculated to inflame and promote xenophobia.

The serious issues raised in this debate cannot and must not be addressed on the basis of myths, which feed prejudice, or confusion, which is promoted by the Government's muddled approach to policy making and enforcement. Our Irish citizenship is too precious for that. The Government claims that the integrity of our citizenship system is at stake. It is the view of the Green Party that the integrity of our public is now also at stake in the wake of the Government's handling of these issues. At the heart of our identity as a republic, we have set our faith against any form of sectarian or racist exclusion. Our republic aspires to celebrate inclusion and diversity. Our vision of citizenship and identity is both Irish and global in its reach.

In a report commissioned by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform from the international organisation on migration, the significance of the issue is well understood. It states that the questions of a country's citizenship and of the circumstances in which it may be acquired, whether by right or as a privilege, are often questions of a highly philosophical and political nature which may go to the heart of a nation's perception of its own identity. The Government is proposing to interfere with Irish citizenship laws which have existed since the foundation of the State. Moreover, our traditional common law approach to acquiring citizenship is part of our inheritance as a republic. Any policy changes to be introduced in laws concerning citizenship and immigration must be fair, well thought out and evidence-based. We note with alarm that the statistics to support the Minister's core claims regarding citizenship tourism are not wholly available in terms of Ireland. The Minister said as much earlier and, subsequent to his initial claims, he has been forced to shift the ground of his argument for change. These are not the actions of a man with evidence in pursuit of conviction, they are those of a man filled with misplaced conviction in pursuit of evidence — any evidence or argument will do.

A gap as big as the hole in the ozone layer has opened up in the Minister's argument, not to mention his credibility as an advocate. His Department published statistics for the Dublin maternity hospitals, including the number of births in 2003 to non-nationals, namely, 4,824 or 25% of the total number of births in public hospitals in Dublin. Upon this and other statistics, the Department came to the conclusion that "There are also very obvious implications for the future of Irish immigration policy and for the maintenance of the integrity of Irish law on immigration and residence." Only later did the Minister, Deputy McDowell, concede, upon questioning from a journalist that while 25% of births in Dublin's maternity hospitals were to non-nationals, some of these were to citizens of other EU states and people here on work permits and only one third of them were to people in the asylum process. In other words, the Minister has conceded that the precise breakdown which would give evidence of the extent of the so-called citizenship tourism phenomenon is not available. It is no wonder that the Minister has been forced to back-pedal and state that he is not pinning his hat on the issue of statistics from maternity hospitals.

The Minister's claims on behalf of the masters of the maternity hospitals that they pleaded for a change in the law were flatly contradicted by those individuals. The masters countered that they had neither sought a meeting nor had they pleaded for a change in the law. Not surprisingly, the masters of the maternity hospitals confined themselves to issues they know best. Not least among these are the medical risks to which young mothers are exposing themselves and their unborn children by presenting late in their pregnancies.

In March the Minister proposed a new referendum on the Constitution based on an assertion that there is a growing crisis in our maternity hospitals, particularly those in Dublin. Just a few weeks later, he has shifted the grounds of his argument to such a degree that the maternity hospitals have become a side issue. He stated that this is "not an issue about maternity hospitals". The way he is going, this issue will quickly become an end to his career.

The Minister's record on these issues can only reinforce widely held suspicions about the motives of this Government. I refer here to motivations driven by electoral calculations and an appeal to the fears of the misinformed and the prejudiced. This is the Minister who has brought us a number of debacles which have fed a growing unease with the state of our immigration laws and their enforcement. For example, Deputy McDowell was behind the forced deportation of Irish-born children together with their non-national parents, following the abolition of those parents' right to apply for residency in Ireland. In the words of Ray Dooley, chief executive of the Children's Rights Alliance, "Irish citizen children must not be forced into situations where they may be exposed to a risk of torture, extreme poverty or hardship".

The Minister's Immigration Act 2004 has been described by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties as draconian in nature, lacking in basic safeguards and divorced from the practical operation of the immigration system. The Act was clearly inspired by the Aliens Act 1935, the origins of which can be traced back to the Aliens Restriction Act 1911 — a legal instrument drawn up by Britain in a time of emergency to prevent German spies infiltrating the country. These are the kind of actions which have led former US Congressman, Bruce Morrison, to describe the Government's asylum and immigration system as hopelessly inefficient. Mr. Morrison also stated that "There is so much work to be done to bring together a coherent immigration policy in Ireland rather than jump into a referendum."

The Human Rights Commission, specifically in the person of Maurice Manning, has expressed preliminary concerns about the referendum, including the possibility that it might be inconsistent with the Good Friday Agreement. The joint declaration by the British and Irish Governments has done nothing to reassure us. The leader of the SDLP, Mark Durkan, has also expressed deep reservations about the Government's unilateral move to undo carefully negotiated arrangements under the Good Friday Agreement. This is a time of deep political uncertainty about the future of the Agreement, its institutions and its status vis-À-vis, for example, the Democratic Unionist Party's continuing insistence that it is up for renegotiation. Not for the first time, the Minister, Deputy McDowell, finds himself playing into the hands of the Unionist enemies of the Good Friday Agreement.

The Green Party believes that Bruce Morrison put his finger on the nub of the question when he stated that governments often excuse their lack of enforcement of laws by writing new laws that will not be enforced either. Constitutional referenda should not be used to cover up the failings of Ministers and we do not believe the people want the Constitution abused in this way. In this matter, as in so many others, the Government is the author of its own misfortune. The Government parties have contributed significantly to the confusion, to the irregular and contested enforcement of existing immigration regulations and, ultimately, to the lack of transparency that feeds the misinformation and prejudice surrounding the issue of immigration and asylum seekers in Ireland.

Instead of addressing its own role in creating confusion and feeding prejudice through its incompetent management of the immigration issue, the Government is preparing to further exploit the consequences of its own incompetence. This is what lies behind Bruce Morrison's comment that to ask voters to decide in a vacuum with inadequate enforcement of existing laws is to invite them to exercise their worst instincts about newcomers rather than their best. That is what is dangerous about this referendum and it is why my party supports the amendment to Second Stage referring this matter to the Oireachtas committee on the Constitution.

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