Fiona O'Malley (Dún Laoghaire, Progressive Democrats)

I would appreciate if Deputies allowed me to make my contribution without heckling. We all deserve to be shown that basic courtesy.

The debate should be conducted in a calm way and I would appreciate Deputies allowing me to make my point without interruption. They will have an opportunity to criticise me when I have done so.

The issue is fundamentally and critically one of citizenship. What does Irish citizenship mean and what do we want it to mean? Do we want people who carry an Irish passport and declare themselves to be Irish to have some sense of what it is to be Irish, to have lived here, to have some knowledge of and engagement with our history and, as was said yesterday, some fidelity to our State? The issue is not one of race.

Is the Constitution the appropriate place to define Irish citizenship? Criticism has been made, most recently by Deputy Michael D. Higgins, that this amendment will remove certainty. I remind Deputy Higgins that by making the amendment we will simply revert to the situation which pertained before the Good Friday Agreement when the Oireachtas was the forum in which citizenship would be conferred on people and where it would be defined. People forget that was the case. Hysteria is not helpful to the situation. The question being put to the people is whether or not it is appropriate for the Oireachtas to make decisions on citizenship. We all accept that our Constitution makes the people supreme. We merely ask them if they want to make this choice.

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