Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

Deputy Costello mentioned the passports for investment scheme. Every Government, including those in which the Labour Party participated, operated the scheme. It was a Fianna-PD Government that in 1998 finally abolished the scheme. Deputy Rabbitte, who was very vocal on the matter this morning, sat at the Cabinet table for three years in a Government that operated the passports for investment scheme. This is not the only country in the world to operate it. This has been operated in countries in every corner of the world.

An even more ludicrous suggestion is that the Government is racist. A huge percentage of the immigrant community who come here simply to give birth come from countries where the very fact of giving birth does not automatically convey a right to citizenship. Would those people regard their own countries as racist because they do not give citizenship simply by virtue of birth? I do not think so. Do we consider the other EU countries, in line with whose laws we are trying to change ours, to be racist? I have not heard that argument advanced from any side of the House. I must conclude that we are accused of racism either because we are doing it now — the British did it 25 years ago — or because it is this Government that is doing it.

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