Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

There will be no new category of "non-citizens". Citizenship laws do not create categories of non-citizens; they set out the criteria for the acquisition of citizenship of a particular state by a certain segment of people. The world is full of categories of people who are, by reference to Irish law, non-citizens of Ireland. The world is full of states where citizenship law does not confer citizenship of the state on persons born in the territory of a state. That does not lead to the traducing of the human rights of persons born in their territory and it will not have that effect here. There is no new category of non-citizens being created. The only category of children in Ireland will be children who are Irish citizens and children who are citizens of some other state. That is the case at present.

If one looks around a playground in Ireland, one will see children who have come from different parts of the world. If they come here with their parents, they are not Irish nationals. However, they are entitled to the same primary school education under our Constitution. They are in the Irish State on the same basis as everybody else, subject to the question of whether their parents may be told, in certain circumstances, to go home.

While they are here, and this is a point that must be emphasised, they are entitled to the same degree of protection from Irish courts in respect of their fundamental rights. That is a proposition that is beyond questioning. If it were not so, we would have had many NGOs already saying that foreign children in our playgrounds are second class members of society because the courts will not help them out if their right to life or their right to property or their right to education becomes an issue. If that were the case I would have expected a clamour of people saying, for example, in respect of a Filipino nurse, who comes here to help us in the health system, that her fundamental rights in Irish law were less than those of an Irish nurse.