Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I support the thrust of the campaign and the intentions behind it. The matter of how this can be achieved requires a bit more discussion. There is always the law of unintended consequences. We all know of children, young people and teenagers who were born in Ireland, who know no other home and who speak with Dublin, Wicklow or Kerry accents - not that someone's accent really matters. Many were born here, some were brought here at a very young age. To me it would be wrong to deport them to countries they never called home and expect them to start their lives there. We need a change in this area to provide a better legal mechanism for "dreamers", as the Deputy describes them, young people born in Ireland who are not citizens but who know no other home and were schooled here. They need a pathway to regularisation and then to citizenship, which is a slightly different thing.

Reversing the 27th amendment is a different issue. Unusually for a European country, our previous regime allowed anyone born in the State to be an Irish citizen automatically. Unfortunately that can be open to abuse. It could confer rights on a parent who arrived here illegally, which would not be the right thing to do. It could also represent a pull factor, causing people to come here from England to avail of that right. That is what happens in America, as the Deputy knows. We want to avoid replicating that. These are complicated issues, but the principle of providing a pathway to residency and citizenship for children who have only known Ireland as home is a desirable one. We will be happy to work with the Labour Party on that.

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