Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

As for asylum, any proposal to include in the reckoning a period spent as an asylum seeker as distinct from a refugee would serve to encourage false claims and the protraction of the asylum process.

The reckonability or otherwise of periods of residence in the State by non-EEA or Swiss nationals can be easily ascertained by examining the passports of the persons concerned for stamps affixed by the Irish immigration authorities. That is in respect of periods in the Irish State, but as regards periods in Northern Ireland the situation is considerably more complex. As I said earlier, the Government's aim is to mirror conditions for the entitlement to Irish citizenship North and South and as regards this category of parent, subsection (5) of the new section 6B does just that. Immigration laws and practice in Northern Ireland, however, are not the same as those in this State and we cannot rely on them to converge with those in this State or even remain as they are. In particular, the immigration stamp in the passport of a non-EEA national legally residing in the North records a permission to remain in the UK, not in the part of it that is Northern Ireland.

We therefore have to put in place a means whereby the Irish authorities can verify that the period of residence of a non-EEA national parent before the birth of a child was lawful and reckonable, and that it was in the North as distinct from some other part of the United Kingdom. The approach that the Bill takes to deal with this is set out in section 14. This inserts a new section 28A into the 1956 Act, adapting the procedure already in section 28 of that Act whereby a person who is an Irish citizen, other than a naturalised one, can seek a certificate of Irish nationality. In any case where the question of the entitlement of a person to Irish citizenship depends on an assertion of reckonable residence of a non-EEA national parent in the North, whether that be for all or part of the three-year period, the first step will be to apply for a certificate of Irish nationality and to support that application with a statutory declaration together with whatever verifying documents are necessary.

It is not possible to set out in the primary statute what those documents might be since some of them will be UK immigration documents or stamps which the UK authorities have the right to change from time to time to suit themselves, and it would be impractical for me to bring amending legislation before the House every time that became necessary. Instead there is a power to prescribe documentation by statutory instrument and a power to require further documentation as may be necessary in particular cases.

This category of person, where the Irish citizenship entitlement depends on a period of residence of a non-EEA national parent in the North, is the only one where a form of administrative intervention is required in order to establish Irish citizenship. In all other cases, the official documentation necessary to show the entitlement is either readily available in the form of birth certificates, immigration documents and the like or else can be generated by way of statutory declaration supported by the appropriate documents. There is no simpler way around this. It is a practical difference dictated by the fact that the North is another jurisdiction. The important element is that it is a way of implementing the Government's policy of ensuring that an entitlement to Irish citizenship will arise out of similar conditions, whether North or South.

To go with that new system, there are some new measures designed to address the situation where a person attempts to secure an appearance of Irish citizenship by making false declarations. The first of these is in section 13, which enables the Minister to revoke a certificate of nationality that was based on false or mistaken information. The other important feature is in section 15, which puts a new general offences provision into the 1956 Act, covering the possibilities that will now exist for potential abuse of the system. Consequent on that, we are able to repeal the only offence provision at present in the Act by means of section 12.

Section 9 addresses a potential anomaly that could arise in the operation of the special naturalisation conditions for spouses of Irish citizens, where the non-national spouse is living with his or her Irish citizen spouse who is resident abroad in the public service, for instance, in an Irish embassy overseas. The nature of postings abroad is such that without the change which I am proposing here to deem time spent abroad in the public service as time spent in the State, the non-national spouse might never build up the periods of residence in Ireland required under section 15A or section 15.

Senators will be aware that I asked the Human Rights Commission for comments on the earlier draft of the Bill, published last April. The commission raised a number of general points in its observations on the draft legislation and adverted in a general way to obligations under a number of international instruments such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. I assure the House that the provisions of the Bill are fully consistent with the State's obligations under these instruments and I am heartened by the fact that the commission's observations did not indicate anything to the contrary.

However, one of the aspects on which the commission commented was a concern that there was no provision in the 1956 Act for the naturalisation of minors. While this concern is in fact mistaken — section 16 contains specific provisions addressing the naturalisation of minors — one side effect of the new narrow definition of "Irish associations" in section 10 of the Bill would be to limit the power to naturalise some classes of children. While section 16 envisages applications made on behalf of minors who are of Irish descent or have Irish associations or who have a parent who has been naturalised, without the change proposed in section 8 other children could not be naturalised. This change permits the possibility of naturalising a child born to non-national parents after the coming into effect of the new rules for entitlement to Irish citizenship in the Bill but whose parents did not at the time of the birth meet the residence requirement for that entitlement. This will ensure that the matter raised by the Human Rights Commission will not give rise to the concern that it voiced.

I am satisfied that the proposals in the Bill will result in a fair and sensible citizenship law, one which will acknowledge the stake that non-nationals established in Ireland have in Irish society by ensuring that their children born here have the entitlement to be Irish citizens. We are not concerned with their skin colour, the language they speak or their appearance. What matters is that they have a substantial connection with Irish society and that, accordingly, their children will be part of the Irish nation by operation of law. As a people, we have decided by an overwhelming majority in a referendum that we do not believe the mere accident of birth in Ireland should be the sole criterion in determining Irish citizenship.

Nobody will be left stateless as a consequence of the changes we are bringing about in the law. Nobody who would otherwise be stateless will be deprived of Irish citizenship in any circumstance whatsoever. Under international law we are obliged to maintain that situation. For instance, in the frequently cited case of a Filipino nurse, if she does not qualify because of the shortness of her stay in Ireland, her child will nonetheless be a Filipino citizen under Filipino law. If that were not the case, if we are dealing with some country which did not have jus sanguinis citizenship rights for children of short-stay parents in Ireland, they will be entitled to Irish citizenship as a fallback position.

Everyone born in Ireland will be a citizen of some state. That important point is sometimes lost sight of and it is suggested that we are producing some second class of children in Ireland who are of an inferior status in the eyes of our law. That is not so. Every child born in Ireland, whether before or after the passage of this legislation, will be a citizen of a sovereign state. If a child is not an Irish citizen because of the shortness of its parents' connection with the Irish state, and is not a citizen of some other state on the basis of descent, then that child will be an Irish citizen because that is the fallback position of Irish law.