Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

The purpose of this Bill is to make an amendment to the Constitution. The amendment is very simple and proposes to restore to the Oireachtas the power to legislate as to the circumstances in which citizenship will be conferred on a child born on the island of Ireland to parents, neither of whom is an Irish citizen and neither of whom is entitled to become an Irish citizen. The Oireachtas had that power up until 1999. This Bill is designed to restore to the Oireachtas in a carefully balanced way a measure of the general power given to it under the 1937 Constitution by Article 9.1. 2° to legislate for the grant of Irish citizenship. The change would give to the Oireachtas the responsibility for specifying the circumstances in which an entitlement to Irish citizenship would arise for persons born in the island of Ireland to parents, neither of whom was entitled to be an Irish citizen.

In 1996, the Constitution Review Group, the report of which I have in my hand, had considered whether it would ever be appropriate to have such right of citizenship based on birth written into the Constitution. Having carefully considered the matter, the group of experts which was chaired by Dr. T.K. Whitaker and included very many eminent, well respected legal minds, among them the then Attorney General, Mr. Dermot Gleeson, senior counsel, the former Attorney General, Mr. John Rogers, senior counsel and the then future Attorney General, Mr. David Byrne, senior counsel, as well as other senior legal academics and practitioners, concluded that it would be inappropriate to insert such a provision into the Constitution. Its report stated:

The Review Group, recognising that a provision on citizenship by birth necessarily includes exceptions and conditions and is correspondingly complex, is of the view that the subject is more appropriately dealt with in ordinary legislation.

It concludes that a provision on the subject should not be inserted in the Article. Those words and that analysis were, I suggest, prophetic and weighty.

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