Results 581-600 of 18,726 for speaker:Michael McDowell

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: The Deputies are being disorderly.

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: The Deputy should stop heckling. He was giving out about that subject a moment ago. He is behaving like a baby.

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: In order that there be no misunderstanding, the vote on the Order for Second Stage was taken on 8 April. The motion I am now moving is, "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." That will be voted on at the end of the debate.

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: 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...

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: That report was sent for consideration to an all-party Oireachtas constitutional committee, then chaired by Deputy Jim O'Keeffe and of which I was a member. Let me congratulate Deputy Jim O'Keeffe on his appointment as Fine Gael spokesman on justice, a position he last held in 1979. That all-party committee set itself a work agenda and studied that report. No member of that committee at that...

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: Before I come to the detail of the proposal before the House, I would like to reflect a little on the nature of citizenship and nationality.

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: Article 9 of the Constitution, as much a political as a legal document, declares that fidelity to the nation and loyalty to the State are fundamental political duties of all citizens. It is important on occasion to remind Members who talk about citizenship that loyalty to this State, which has only one Army, is a fundamental political duty of all citizens

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: This encapsulates to my mind the essence of the intertwined concepts of citizenship and nationality. To be a citizen of the State is to be as Article 2 states "part of the Irish nation"; to be part of the community which forms that nation; to share the benefits and the vicissitudes that membership of that society brings with it; and to accord respect to the entity that has bestowed...

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: Citizenship is the means whereby we become members of a moral, cultural, political, social, economic and legal community based on rights and duties established in law. Citizenship, then, is not just an entitlement to a passport with a particular symbol on its cover, although possession of a passport is undoubtedly an important attribute of entitlement to a particular citizenship. It is a...

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: As the Minister who categorically ended granting of citizenship to investors under the "passports for sale" scheme, I am entitled to state that any abuse of citizenship, by which it is conferred on persons with no tangible link to the nation or the State whether of parentage, upbringing or of long-term residence in the State, flies in the face of Article 9.2 and devalues the concept of...

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: I will repeat myself because Deputy Higgins seems to be a slow learner. No other country has this combination of jus soli and the right to travel in other states.

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: I am sure the Deputy will.

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: Do some reading in the meantime. The aspect of our law that gives rise to this abuse is the universal entitlement of any person born in the island of Ireland, which includes its islands and its seas, to be an Irish citizen. The position until December 1999 was that under the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956, every person born in the island of Ireland was an Irish citizen. This was a...

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: The new Article 2, along with Article 3, arose out of the complex of agreements known as the Good Friday Agreement. The aim of the two new Articles was to replace the territorial claim made in the pre-existing Articles 2 and 3 with a formula which recognised the legitimate aspirations of all sectors of society in Northern Ireland. The British-Irish Agreement, which represents the...

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: It has never been suggested that the parties to the negotiations of the Good Friday Agreement at Castle Buildings in Stormont in 1998 set out to deprive the Oireachtas of the right to decide the circumstances in which children born to non-nationals on the island of Ireland would become entitled to Irish citizenship. However, a number of people, including myself, were aware that the wording of...

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: I was not the only person who had doubts on the matter. The Department of Justice, as it then was, also saw the implications in this area. For completeness, I must say that my constituency colleague, Deputy Quinn, who is here today, wrote to the Taoiseach raising the issue. One of the options canvassed by Deputy Quinn in his letter was a balancing amendment to Article 9 of the Constitution...

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: If the Deputies listen they will learn. At the time it was a matter of political judgment whether the introduction of the immigration issue into an already sensitive debate on the concluded Good Friday Agreement would be appropriate.

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: In retrospect, it may be that the much lower volume of migration and asylum-seeking at the time led to a belief that the issue was of far less importance than the crucial task of securing a consensus, North and South, to the adoption of the Good Friday Agreement. I find it difficult to believe that anyone would now suggest that a similar amendment to Article 9 would contravene the Good Friday...

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: People have criticised me for not producing evidence that this sort of abuse is occurring. Some have sought to go further and, head in the sand, deny that it is occurring at all. I am the first to admit that comprehensive figures are not within my remit to gather, coming as they do primarily from maternity hospitals whose first concern is quite properly for the health and well-being of the...

Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Second Stage. (21 Apr 2004)

Michael McDowell: That said, I have compiled sufficient information to provide clear and incontrovertible evidence that a disproportionate number of non-national mothers are giving birth to children in Dublin maternity hospitals and that a disproportionate number of non-national mothers are presenting to maternity hospitals at a late stage of pregnancy.