Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I pay tribute to Senator Quinn for his considerable work in preparing this legislation, which deals with a matter on which I am already on record as holding views sympathetic to those underlying the Bill. The debate provides me with an opportunity to reiterate those views, which coincide in large measure with those of Senator Quinn.

Senators have available to them the May 2000 report of the review group on the investment-based naturalisation scheme. With Government approval, I published the report shortly after coming into office and arranged for copies of it to be placed in the Oireachtas Library. It gives a detailed description of the workings of the scheme, which have been much debated since then, and I do not propose to address them in detail this evening, other than to point out some important aspects to give a full perspective on the issue.

The scheme was established in 1989 and was adopted by successive Ministers for Justice until it was abolished in 1998 by the then Government. I understand its original genius, if I may use that phrase, was, by his own account, none other than the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy John Bruton, who observed other countries engaging in similar activities and decided that a scheme of this nature was appropriate for this State. Since its abolition by the previous Government, no new applications were to be accepted and only applications on hand when the scheme was suspended in September 1996 by the then Government, or which were to be accepted for processing afterwards by that Government for exceptional reasons, have been processed since. In essence, it has been a winding up operation, as a result of which no further investors are in the pipeline. The scheme is well and truly dead.

From time to time, applications have been and will be made for naturalisation by or on behalf of the spouses and children of investors who were naturalised under the former scheme, each of which is considered on its own merits. The "Irish associations" of persons in this category does not arise from an investment but from the fact that they are associated with a person who is, in law, an Irish citizen. Likewise, were an investor citizen to have a child next week and enter the child's name on the foreign births register, the child automatically becomes an Irish citizen because his or her parent was an Irish citizen at the time of its birth. I say this for the purposes of clarity because, as I am sure Senator Quinn will acknowledge, these issues have led to considerable confusion in debates in the past.