Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

I am pleased to have an opportunity to make a contribution on the Bill, which is not an earth shattering one in terms of its scope. Other legislation in the area of immigration and citizenship matters will undoubtedly come downstream.

In essence, the Bill is the legislative response to the referendum and I wish to make a few general points in regard to that because the previous speaker, Deputy Fiona O'Malley, made some interesting comments. She said citizenship matters. Yes, citizenship matters, but I profoundly disagree with her when she said there was no clarity on this matter in advance of the referendum. Of course there was clarity. Irish citizens were people born on the island of Ireland and people born on the island of Ireland were Irish citizens. That was clear. She correctly stated that we now have degrees of Irish citizenship, depending on length of stay and the legal basis of one's parents' period of residence here. No doubt a range of anomalies will arise in future. She is wrong to say we moved from a position of lack of clarity to clarity. We have not, but I do not intend rehashing the debate as that would be unproductive and unhelpful. The people have spoken decisively on this matter and as a democrat I respect their judgment although I do not agree with it and I do not expect anybody to assume I should have changed my view on it.

I wish to make a couple of general observations on the debate. After the people spoke and after a very divisive debate, I thought it very unwelcome to have the type of Second Stage contribution we had from the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy McDowell. I listened to his speech and I read it subsequently. I regard it as self-congratulatory, smug and ungenerous. I also regard it as, in part, inaccurate. People hold strong views on an issue like this. Some have made mistakes in terms of the presentation of arguments and, in the past, Members of this House have been racist or quasi-racist in their comments on these matters.

The Minister for equality in particular has responsibility not to be ambivalent in any way in regard to these matters. I do not suggest he is personally ambivalent, but to ascribe all the inaccuracies to one side of the debate, as he did in his Second Stage contribution, does not calm but aggravates the situation and frustrates people who have strong, carefully thought-out and well held beliefs. People on that side of the argument make mistakes occasionally. Does that mean they should be vilified as the Minister wants to dismiss them, in a self-satisfied, smug way, although dealing with people's lives? I regret that the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform chose that line and I am glad he is in the House to hear my comments.

In my judgment, the timing of the referendum was based on a calculation that it could act as a useful backdrop for the Government in the local and European elections. It was a particularly inept judgment because while it swelled the voting numbers, people voted in favour of the Government's proposals but ironically against the Government candidates for various other reasons. I regret the Minister's contribution because he is capable of better. He said it was a pleasure to make a case for the referendum proposals calmly and reflectively in the other House, in contrast to this one. My only wish is that he will have many opportunities in the future to address the other House rather than this.

Several issues have arisen since the referendum was passed that this legislation does not address. I hope the Minister will listen calmly to what I have to say on these matters. He may be rather bored by them because I have rehearsed some of the cases in an Adjournment debate. Since the response to that was prepared in advance and was entirely unrelated to the case I made I hope the Minister has had a chance to reflect more fully on some of the residual matters. The word "residual" is not intended to diminish or understate their importance because they are matters of great importance. It is interesting the Minister in his Second Stage contribution said: "The changes we make to citizenship law must show that there is a continuing céad míle fáilte for those who migrate legitimately to Ireland with a view to establishing a substantial connection with the State by creating new livelihoods for themselves." Most people in this House would strongly support that thought but it is no more than an utterance because it is not matched by reality.

We are very ungenerous in the way we treat the relatives of those whom we not only allow to come here but invite, and on whom we depend. I have discussed directly with the Minister the case of a senior physician in Wexford General Hospital who wanted his aunt to visit him last summer. We would not grant a visa for his aunt to visit him although she had a valid visa to visit the United Kingdom. The man has been here for seven years, for five of which he has been a senior, vital member of staff in Wexford General Hospital. His colleagues and staff provided a range of supporting observations for that application. If we ask senior medical people to come to work and maintain our medical system but do not allow their relatives to visit them temporarily, we do not offer a céad míle fáilte to those who migrate here or who work here legitimately. We invited Filipino nurses to work and provide and maintain an essential service here, yet it took great effort to ensure that their spouses could come and work or even reside here. We have a long way to go before the céad míle fáilte to which the Minister referred becomes a reality. It is no more than a glib throwaway phrase.

There are three cases with which I am dealing in my constituency and which I will continue to raise. The general issue concerns the families of Irish-born children who have been here for up to five years, who have deep roots here, whose children remember no other country, who in many cases have received an Irish education for three, four or five years and whom the Minister wishes to deport. That is nothing short of an absolute scandal. Once this Bill is enacted, will the Minister please rectify this situation because nothing less than torture faces these families? When I mentioned them on an Adjournment debate the Minister said they were among 11,000 and that the Government had underestimated the numbers for its own political reasons. These are not idle numbers, they are real families with friends, school mates and colleagues in my constituency, and I want to put their cases directly to the Minister tonight. I hope that having heard them yet again he will pay particular attention to them and that he will rescind the deportation orders he has signed in two of the cases. It would be a cruelty beyond my understanding to go ahead and deport these people. I speak with whatever passion I can command.

The first is a Bulgarian family, Kamen and Ivalina Kaltchev who live in my home town, Wexford. They have resided there for five years, have an Irish-born child and their son aged 11 has received his primary education from second to sixth class in Wexford. He is as Irish as any child in that school, good at hurling, speaks English with a Wexford accent and has only a vague recollection of Bulgaria and Bulgarian. They are rooted in Wexford. Out of the blue they received a deportation notice. The Minister is reflecting on this again in light of the information submitted in my parliamentary question.

The principal of the CBS wrote to me stating:

I am writing in relation to the family of one of my pupils and respectfully request your assistance. Stefan Kaltchev enrolled in second class in our school five years ago and is now in sixth class. Stefan and his mother Ivalina and his father Keman arrived in Ireland from Bulgaria. They have successfully become part of the school community and the wider community of Wexford. Seventeen months ago Ivalina and Keman's daughter was born in Wexford General Hospital. [This was written in October of this year]. The Kaltchev family have just received notification that they face deportation. I feel very strongly that a case should be made on humanitarian grounds to allow this family to continue to stay.

The principal goes through how the school has responded to the boy and how entirely he is involved in the school community. The rest of my file contains correspondence from other supporting organisations in Wexford regarding this case.

The second case concerns Alexander, Svetlana, Julia and Alina Lishenko. This couple and their family have resided in Ireland for five years. Their two Ukrainian-born children speak perfect English, with Wexford accents. The younger of the two Ukrainian-born children has little or no memory of life in the Ukraine, having left at the age of five. The older daughter, Julia, is the mother of an Irish-born child and is totally integrated into Wexford society, with a Wexford partner. They have set up home together. All those people face deportation out of the blue. The eldest daughter's partner asked me whether he should look for custody of their child as well. It would be cruelty to do that. I ask the Minister to review that situation. There is much supporting documentation, which I can give to the Minister, referring to the fact that they have established themselves in Ireland.

The third case is that of a mother of a child, a Nigerian national whose name is Oluwadolapo Adebiyi. What concerned me about this case is that this woman was arrested and incarcerated. I will read the Minister's own declaration to me:

On 22 September 2004, she attended the Garda National Immigration Bureau to make enquiries about her social welfare payments which had been suspended because of an earlier evasion. She was arrested on the same date and lodged in the Dochas centre in Mountjoy while arrangements were made to remove her to Nigeria. The provisions of section 12 of the Childcare Act 1991 were invoked by the gardaí and the child was taken into the care of the South Western Area Health Board and placed with foster parents.

This woman, in a foreign land, was put into Mountjoy jail and her son was put into foster care in the Midlands for three weeks. In response to my parliamentary question, the Minister concluded that the facts of the case were clear and he was satisfied that this person had been treated in a fair and humane manner in all respects. The Minister's judgment is as the Minister's judgment is, and others can judge as they judge. I just simply say that if an Irish citizen, a young mother with a child, had been put in jail in Romania, Bulgaria or Nigeria, and her child taken into care, then we in this House would have something to say.

The Minister has an extremely difficult job and I will not gainsay any of that. He has many people to deal with and there are many who want to abuse our law. I simply return to two essential issues. First, there are a number of people with deep roots in our society right now and I have instanced three of them, two of whom I know particularly well; the Ukrainian and Bulgarian examples. I ask the Minister to reflect on these cases, take the people involved out of their dreadful misery and grant them the right of permanent residence in Ireland. What happens with all new applicants will happen on the basis of a new law that we have now enacted.

When I was spokesman on justice in my party more than four years ago, I published a document called "Ending the Chaos". It was not a comprehensive document but it had three strands to it. The first strand was that we would have the resources to deal effectively and efficiently with asylum applications. The second strand was that we would separate asylum seekers from economic migrants and have a green card system to deal with those who are real economic migrants. This would entail a quota system so that such migrants would not be forced into the asylum stream. We have been promised many things. We have been promised a reform of the work permit system that will take the work permit away from the employer and give it to the successful employee so that we do not have bonded servitude as we had in one or two instances. However, we have none of these reforms and I ask the Minister to do something about these matters.

The third strand in my proposal was to have a properly funded and structured integration system for migrants in this country that goes well beyond the inadequate anti-racism measures undertaken by the Minister's Department to date. We need to have a much better system to prepare for the type of multi-culturalism that is happening apace in our country. We certainly have not resourced or structured that in a satisfactory way.

I want to return to the comments made by Deputy Fiona O'Malley on general policy. Some of her comments are extremely worrying if they represent the thinking of the Progressive Democrats. For the first time, she has suggested a notion of graded citizenship. I do not know what she means by that but I want to signal my gravest concern at the notion of it. It is probably motivated by the concept in the UK where an old imperial power, torn between loyalty to its former colonial citizens but afraid to allow them citizenship rights, created tiers of citizenship. If we go down that route it will be a disaster and I counsel the Minister against it. Deputy O'Malley also spoke about a declaration of loyalty to the State. That will be an interesting one. Maybe we could have our very own "Patriot Act", so that we can measure loyalty. In 20 years in this House, it is my experience that those who consider themselves most loyal to the concept of the Republic have been the most destructive in the building of the real Republic in Ireland over the past 30 years. Our history indicates that.

This is a Bill that is consequent on the vote of the people. I do not agree with it but I have to accept the decisive democratic decision taken by the people on the day of the referendum. I regret the tone of the Minister's contribution and I invite him to have a different tone in his summation. It would be much better received on this side of the House. We have not entirely written off the Minister yet.

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