Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

Perhaps the masters of those hospitals found themselves in an awkward spotlight that they had not anticipated. As the Minister said, they did not urge him to hold a referendum or provide him with the wording for it, but they did ask that something should be done. It was then up to the Minister and the Government to work out what that was but, obviously, very little could be done without proceeding in this way.

I wish to read into the record a few paragraphs from my article in The Irish Times of 24 April 2004:

What Dan Boyle of the Green Party correctly called "the back door to EU citizenship" is actually the key issue. We are not in the position of the US and Canada, vast countries with only one or two borders. We are an island, where a person can, on the face of it, acquire both Irish and EU citizenship without ever entering the jurisdiction, and without the parents intending that the infant should have any further connection with Ireland [North or South].

We do have obligations to our EU partners. An EU about to take in 10 new members [tomorrow] is hardly "fortress Europe", but if we think EU immigration policy should be more liberal we should concert that at EU level [rather than maintaining a particular anomaly here].

Irish citizenship policy has gone back and forth somewhat since 1922. The right of a person born in the Free State to Irish nationality and citizenship was written into Article 3 of the 1922 Constitution, so this is not the first time that birthright to Irish citizenship was in the Constitution. The matter was shifted to legislation in 1935 and 1956. The 1956 Act contains a bald statement that "every person born in Ireland is an Irish citizen from birth" but then went on to qualify it in a later article requiring a person in the North, not otherwise a citizen, to declare themselves to be one.

Until recently there has not been a fundamental problem because the only people who wanted their children born in Ireland were those with strong Irish associations. It is a new problem that has arisen and perhaps our situation was highlighted by putting it into the Constitution, but I suspect the problem would have arisen anyway. In other circumstances, it could perhaps have been dealt with by legislation but it is now being dealt with by way of the Constitution.

I am proud of what the Government did in renegotiating Articles 2 and 3, which the country supported. I am glad the solution to this problem has been found in making an alteration to Article 9, so that we do not have to alter a jot or iota of what is in the Good Friday Agreement.