Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

The child never had a constitutional right until 1999 in those circumstances. It was a statutory right. The world went on very well without a constitutional right until 1999. The roof will not fall in in similar circumstances now. To be practical about it, anybody who is living in Ireland on a long-term basis is entitled to claim Irish nationality. If that person was entitled to live in Ireland, he or she would be entitled to claim Irish citizenship and nationality after a period of time.

One of the joys of bringing this back to the Legislature is that we will be able to deal with all of these cases by legislation. We will be able to provide whatever we wish in respect of recently deceased parents who were Irish citizens — spouse does not enter into this in most cases, it is purely parentage — and deal with all of those exceptions. We will be able to provide the most minutely tailored distinctions between one category and another as we desire.

Senator Terry asked me what was wrong with her proposed amendment to the Constitution, but would it deal with a situation where somebody renounced Irish citizenship? If we said "who was at any time previously an Irish citizen", would she say that somebody could renounce it? Would she say that even though both parents of the child had renounced Irish citizenship, the child should nonetheless be an Irish citizen? That would be a strange outcome. There is no point putting this into the Constitution. We can deal with all of it in statute form and we can make all the exceptions, concessions and restrictions we believe are apposite to produce a fair result. To take the example, the draftsman of Senator Terry's amendment contemplated somebody dying and drafted words on that account, but it equally applies to somebody who renounced Irish citizenship or who was deprived of Irish citizenship by legal process. Do we want to put that into our Constitution without thinking it through?