Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

Article 2 makes that very clear. Senator Hayes and Mr. MacEochaigh's article missed this point. Article 2 confers on anyone born in the island of Ireland, regardless of their connection with this country in reality, an absolute entitlement to Irish citizenship, which is the issue we are dealing with. It refers to people who have an absolute entitlement, regardless of how tenuous their link with our State.

We are not changing the law ipso facto by the passage of this referendum. We are revesting in these Houses the right to determine the circumstances in which people born in the island of Ireland to non-national parents will become entitled to Irish citizenship. It existed until 1999 and we are putting it back where it belongs.

There may be a variety of views as to whether the three year proposal of the Government is right or wrong, generous or mean-minded, or whatever adjective one wishes to use. There may be people who think it should be six months and others six years, but that is not what the people will be deciding. They will be deciding merely that their elected politicians, after due reflection, will come to a decision on these matters. They have a guarantee that whatever their elected politicians do it will be in conformity with international law, the Good Friday Agreement and the British-Irish Agreement.

Senator Maurice Hayes for his part urged on me the importance of emphasising that the British-Irish Agreement and the Good Friday Agreement are not violated, which is the case, by revesting in the Oireachtas this power to make that decision. It was never part of the architecture of that Agreement as regards the negotiations which happened in Castle Buildings that everybody sat around a table and said that if Mrs. Chen comes from Cardiff to Belfast in future, she will be able to resist expulsion from the United Kingdom on the basis of legal advice that she had a child in Belfast to avail of Irish citizenship. That was never contemplated at the time.

A question also arose regarding numbers. I will not read out the maternity hospital statistics, save to say that in 2003 the highest number of non-national births was among the Nigerian community. I accept that could result from cultural reasons. In the three Dublin maternity hospitals, 1,515 out of a total of 22,895 births, or between 7% to 10%, were to Nigerian women. I reiterate that there is not a correlation between the number of work permits held by minority nationalities and the birth pattern. In those circumstances, although we must accept that many such as Nigerian doctors and Filipino nurses come to work here, an abundance of evidence exists to suggest there is no direct correlation between the number of legitimate economic migrants and the number of births. The implication, and I say this without rancour, is that as the Nigerian lady so honestly admitted, it was a significant draw in her mind that she was doing the best for her child. We should not be so politically correct or self-censoring to avoid saying what is blindingly obvious, that something of huge value can be conferred on children of immigrants in Europe by coming to Ireland to get citizenship. That is not a great mystery or a truth that dare not speak its name, but a plain, simple fact. We have to deal with the reality.