Kathleen O'Meara (Labour)

I hope the tallypersons have a long future ahead of them. They have done nothing that needs to be forgiven, as they always did an excellent job and gave us wonderful information. I am glad Senator Mansergh welcomed the decision on electronic voting and the Government's acceptance of the decision is also welcome. I hope time will now be given to consider electronic voting fully and to ask whether we really need it at all.

That point is apt because a similar principle applies to the Bill. It is important to give enough time for full consideration of issues. Electronic voting did not have constitutional or legal implications but people had many concerns about it. This issue has huge implications, and changing the Constitution is not a matter which should be taken lightly. I am not saying that is the Minister's attitude, but not enough time has been given to this measure, which is being rushed. No coherent or solid case has been made for this very significant constitutional change, and one must ask why it is being brought forward in such a rushed fashion.

On 17 February the Taoiseach told the Dáil that there were no plans for a constitutional referendum and that he had no plans for constitutional amendments. Less than one month later the Minister announced plans for a citizenship referendum. Since then, Opposition parties, parties in Northern Ireland and the Human Rights Commission have all expressed their concerns about the implications of proceeding with this measure. Despite those concerns and the lack of agreement, the Government is pursuing this in a single-minded fashion, which is something we will regret in the future.

In September 1983 the country went to the polls to pass the so-called pro-life amendment. There is no link between these two measures but there were warnings at that time that the provision could have the opposite effect to its stated intention and that more time should be given to debating it. We should not use the Constitution for political reasons and we should not make changes in the Constitution lightly. At the very minimum there should be all-party agreement on such measures and many months should be given to consideration of the proposals.

Constitutional law is difficult and complex to understand. I am not an expert on law and particularly on constitutional law. In fact, I find it a difficult and complex area to understand, which is one reason time should be given to it. The issues need to be explained with great clarity and questions that arise need to be answered. The questions of ordinary people on the street need to be answered.

Last weekend I was canvassing in my constituency with some local election candidates. When the issue arose it became clear that people did not see this as a citizenship referendum, but thought it was about whether foreign workers should be allowed to work here. The group I met are working in a factory which has many foreign workers. They resent it greatly because they say it is reducing the wage levels. They are not happy about the number of foreign workers in their town and in the factories in which they work. They see this as a referendum on whether we should have foreign workers and will vote accordingly. They may vote in favour of it with a view to preventing foreigners from coming here. That is far removed from what the referendum is about.

The time remaining between now and 11 June is short. While the commission will launch an advertisement campaign, there is no guarantee that it will clarify for people what the referendum is about. This is a referendum about citizenship in which we state who gets to be Irish and who does not. It is a profound and significant event. It is clear the public at large does not know what it is about. I ask the Minister to take that on board because the result could be that when people do not know what they are voting on, they may not vote at all. That is no way to handle the Bunreacht, the fundamental law of the country, the basic principles by which the State operates. It is unsatisfactory to say the least. The people are being asked if they agree with the provisions being proposed by the Government. I am concerned about the implications for the Good Friday Agreement of tinkering around with provisions inserted in 1998 for a particular reason.

I have been looking at the document produced by the Minister's Department on asylum applications. I was astonished when the Minister announced the referendum on the radio a few weeks ago and spoke about the maternity hospitals as if this had suddenly become a major problem. We have known about the problem of late arrivals at our maternity hospitals for years. It is clear from a breakdown of the figures that it is not only Nigerians and Romanians who are turning up late in their pregnancies to have their children here. They are coming from all over the world. Given that there are so many more non-EU nationals working here, such as Filipinos and so on, there will be a larger number of births from non-EU nationals. In his address to the House, the Minister has proved only that Nigerians and Romanians are very fertile people and they are having more babies here than other groups of non-nationals. He said there were 1,515 births to Nigerian mothers in 2003 in the Dublin maternity hospitals, 469 to Romanian mothers, 46 to Polish mothers and 73 to Lithuanian mothers. What that tells me is that Nigerian and Romanian mothers are fertile. They are in their childbearing years and having babies in this country. That is all it proves to me and nothing else. In my opinion, those figures are too low to justify this constitutional amendment. They are too low to justify a change to the fundamental law of our country. They are also lower than they were, I suggest.

The Minister's figures show that the number of applications for asylum is decreasing and this is clearly set out in the Department's document. We must separate in time the pre-Supreme Court judgment era and the post-Supreme Court judgment era, pre and post the L and O judgment because the Department did not accept applications based on the birth of a child after the Supreme Court judgment. If the period after the Supreme Court judgment in January 2003 and after July 2003, when the Department issued its strategy statement, is examined, one will still see a significant drop in the number of applications.

We have very likely passed the high point of asylum applications, due, very clearly, to measures being taken by the Department and legislation passed in this House. I refer to such measures as the elimination of rent supplements, the introduction of sanctions on illegal immigrants, employment permits, carrier's liability, which is a significant measure, changes to the asylum legislation, such as the introduction of the safety of origin concept in September 2003, and ongoing operational strategies regarding illegal immigration. I argue that this provision is not needed. Due to the measures already taken by the Department and these Houses, the number of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers has decreased and, hence, the number of births has decreased. Despite the high birth rate among Nigerian and Romanian women, the case has not been made for this amendment.

I received some literature from Mr. Pat Montague, who is a PR consultant and a friend and acquaintance of mine. He states:

Is there not a certain irony in the fact that a Fianna Fáil-led Government is seeking to amend de Valera's Constitution in order to remove an anomaly and cure an unintended citizenship advantage conferred purely by accident of birth? It was de Valera's US citizenship that saved him from execution in 1916. He was an infant of an Irish woman and a Spanish man and had acquired citizenship automatically solely by reason of his birth in the US. His mother was two years resident in the US when he was born.

If President Wilson's Administration, as it was then, had used the same rules that are being proposed by this Government, there would have been no grounds for the intervention to save a US citizen, Éamon de Valera, from execution in 1916. There would have been no Treaty split, no Civil War and possibly no Fianna Fáil as a result.

From a child's point of view, which we have not been listening to, birth is an accident; children do not ask to be born and they do not ask to be born in Ireland or Nigeria or Romania or Lithuania or Poland or New York for that matter. All that children ask is that we watch over them.