Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I do not know how many times I will get to speak tonight so I will speak on this amendment now. I thank Deputy Howlin for his forensic outlining of what is behind the amendment. I listened to him carefully. Having left the Chair, I walked around to get back into the mode of TD so that I would not confuse my role. When this came before us last week, I expressed my serious concerns at what the Dáil and the Government were doing. I will use my time to reiterate those concerns tonight because I have no doubt that this will end up before the courts. As parliamentarians, we simply cannot do our job.

This Bill, the Courts, Civil Law, Criminal Law and Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, deals with a collection of serious topics and we are now making amendments that really should have been included in the Bill in the first place or been the subject of separate Bills. All I can do is to use my voice, as other TDs have done, to outline that this is not acceptable. Since the day I came here, Deputy Pringle has been advising people to watch July and Christmas, when legislation is forced through the Dáil.

I am not going to go into the minutiae of the amendment. That has already been done and I could not improve on or come near to what Deputy Howlin has done in that regard so I am going to use my time to refer to the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. We rely on the council as we rely on the Oireachtas Library and Research Service's digest and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, because we could not possibly keep up to date with all that comes before us. However, we do take the time to try to read. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties became aware of this amendment from an IHREC press release. Imagine a body as important as the Irish Council for Civil Liberties becoming aware of this amendment in that manner. It is seriously deficient in every way. The press release is titled "Commission calls for Oireachtas to give appropriate time to consider important amendment" and deals with just one amendment. It reads:

The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission ... has today written to Minister for Justice Helen McEntee for a second time to express significant concerns about the unacceptable haste in which the Government intends to amend legislation allowing for the revocation of naturalized Irish citizenship.

As Deputy Howlin, whom I have rarely quoted so often although I have no hesitation in doing so, has said, we are creating a two-tier system for citizenship. We have also done that with refugees, have we not? We have not learned from that. We created a two-tier system that differentiates between those fleeing Ukraine and those fleeing other countries and have got into an awful mess in that regard. We are now embedding this in legislation. The commission goes on to say:

This places a severe limit on the time available for appropriate pre-legislative scrutiny of the proposed amending legislation to ensure that constitutionally compliant safeguards are built into it.

For the record, there was absolutely no pre-legislative scrutiny.

It continues:

The relevant proposed amendments were published yesterday, 9 July 2024, for insertion at Committee Stage. We believe it is the government's intention to pass the new law on revocation of naturalised citizenship by the end of next week.

The intention is to pass it tonight. Deputy Pringle has quoted some of that, so the point has been made. It was disingenuous in the extreme for the Taoiseach to say on the Order of Business that there is no limit. That was absolutely disingenuous because there is no limit in the sense that we can talk ad nauseam from now till tomorrow - all night if we want to - but it will not make a difference. It is disingenuous in the extreme to say there is no limit because the talking should have been done on pre-legislative scrutiny. That is what pre-legislative scrutiny is for. I ask the backbenchers to stand up and say that we should not do this, that this is not good law, that this is not a way to do business and certainly that it is not a way to instil trust in the democratic process. We need that trust now more than ever. We hear constantly about the rise of the right and about disinformation, and we need to counter that. I have repeatedly said that the best way to counter disinformation is to tell the truth, to lead with clear language and to let the democratic process take its place. I have the greatest respect for the democratic process. I have absolute disgust for the manner in which this has been pushed through not only because it will have the most serious consequences for those whose citizenship will be revoked in a two-tier open-ended manner without procedural safeguards, as has been pointed out by IHREC, but also because it is becoming a pattern, year after year, to rush things through in July and before Christmas. I will take no further time. I have made my point.

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