Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

Without going over yesterday's whole debate, they are different things. The people of Northern Ireland have Irish nationality. They are members of the Irish nation but they are also citizens of this State. We decided to give citizenship of this State to members of the nation and to entrench that in the Constitution. In principle, citizenship and nationality are not the same thing. It would be difficult for us to deny that people living in Northern Ireland who wish to have Irish nationality do not have it. One or two commentators have suggested that is what we should have done, but that would not be possible. Nonetheless, being a state with a jurisdiction confined to 26 counties, without its being in the Constitution it would not necessarily be automatic that because people have or claim Irish nationality they have citizenship of the State. I do not know what all the international parallels are, but I can imagine that there are national minorities in various states who do not necessarily have citizenship of the country to which they feel most affinity. Both concepts have validity; nationality is one thing, citizenship is another. We have decided to make them the same, but the state is of a different extent to the nation. There is no disputing that in territorial terms. We have to keep both concepts alive in the Constitution.

Citizenship evokes civic duties. Nationality is a sense of identity and identification. They are different political and philosophical concepts. Both are in the Constitution and I would like to keep them there, rather than to settle completely for one as against the other.