Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

The Bill has been described as racist. When law, it will apply to everybody across the board, whether Americans, Norwegians, Aryans, non-Aryans, Semites, non-Semites and people of all skin colours and religions. It is not racist and it is unfair to describe it as such.

The Government is not playing the race card for short-term electoral advantage. I believe passionately that my duty as Minister with responsibility for equality, as well as immigration policy, is to keep a firm hand on the tiller, an even keel, and to ensure that people's respect for the law remains solid in order to prevent phenomena, such as splinter right-wing parties and opportunistic exploitation of the race issue, which have emerged in other European countries. Anybody who examines my record on this matter will see I have been fair-minded, reasonable and straight down the middle. My approach and that of the Government command popular and deserved respect.

Our proposal is that Irish citizenship will not be an inducement to people to come here to have children. If people want to come here for a legitimate reason, citizenship should not enter into it. The proposal will not affect the right of any asylum seeker to come to Ireland and our laws on asylum will remain exactly the same. If one is being persecuted or if one claims one is being persecuted, one has the right to come to this State under international law and have one's status decided by the mechanisms we have put in place. This right is not affected. Whether citizenship is available at the end of that process is irrelevant. If one needs and is entitled to international protection, it will be given in this State.

If, however, the State observes a phenomenon of people coming here in mid and late pregnancy claiming to be asylum seekers and concludes, on reasonable grounds, that much, although not all of it, is driven by a desire to avail of Irish citizenship and, therefore, EU citizenship for the child when born, we have a duty to ensure that our citizenship is not devalued in that way, just as we had a duty to ensure that it was not devalued in order that millionaires could simply buy themselves a passport by having lunch in a hotel with a politician.