Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

Jus sanguinis, citizenship by descent, as applied in South Africa and other places, was mentioned. It does not apply only in South Africa and I always notice that the harbingers of the left zero in on white South Africans as a group of people they worry about in this context. It applies in America too. It applies to Irish people in New England, Texas and California who feel a strong bond with this country. I cannot draw up a law to satisfy Senator Ryan that would say to a child or a grandchild of an Irish citizen in Vermont that he or she may come back to Ireland because he or she has red hair and does Irish dancing, but not to extend that to somebody in South Africa who has never heard of the place or been back for donkeys years and whose only motive is to have a bolt hole from a perceived political threat to the way of life. I cannot have a law which says we will accept one particular case because it involves pure love of Ireland, but that in another case it is fear of the unknown. It would be unreasonable of me to have a citizenship of descent law which stated that whenever there was a crisis in the world, we would lift up the drawbridge and no Irish citizenship would be available.

It is open to this House to change the law on citizenship by descent. The House can state that grandchildren are out from now on, and that citizenship will apply only to the first generation. That is perfectly permissible under the Constitution. We could do that tomorrow if we thought collectively that it was fair. Curiously, however, we can do nothing about Mrs. Chen because her position is written into the Constitution. I am merely asking that all these decisions should be put on the same level whereby if there was abuse or if this House thought in its wisdom that the grandchildren of expatriates should no longer be entitled to citizenship, it could act accordingly. Just as that is the case now, it could also be the case as regards any perception that there is an abuse of the jus soli principle arising from Article 2 of the Good Friday Agreement. I will say no more or less than that.

In what was possibly the most passionate speech of this debate, Senator Derek McDowell, having looked carefully at what the Government is doing, concluded that this referendum proposal was being moved forward in bad faith. He suggested the reason for it was to gain electoral advantage and embarrass those who are opposed to it, thereby muddying the waters in the election process so as to grant some perceived party political advantage to those supporting the referendum. That is not true, however.

I heard the Leader of the Labour Party propounding a complex theory about how I was the glove-puppet of Fianna Fáil electoral researchers who had come up with some private research, which was why I was bringing forward this referendum now. That is wholly untrue. I was so stunned to hear it that I made enquiries and I believe there is absolutely no foundation to the existence of such research, let alone to my having ever been motivated by it.