David Norris (Independent)

I move amendment No. 7:

In page 7, between lines 7 and 8, to insert the following:

"(iv) if the person was born to parents one of whom is declared a refugee after the date of birth of that person, and the parent is thereby entitled to reside in the State without any restriction on his or her period of residence (including in accordance with a permission granted under section 4 of the Act of 2004),".

If a child is born to a person within the asylum process and the person is declared a refugee after the date of the birth of the child, that is, the child is born while the person is still in the asylum system, then the child is denied citizenship. This appears arbitrary and contrary to aspects of refugee law since a decision taken to declare a person a refugee is just an acknowledgement or a confirmation that the State agrees with this definition of their status. It does not mean that the person only starts to be a refugee from the date of recognition by the State. The State is saying, "Yes, you are a refugee, you were a refugee and we can now confirm." The refugee status commences from the date of arrival of that person in the country and is confirmed rather than rejected by the process. The effect of the Bill, without this amendment, is to give citizenship to some children of refugees but not to all, so there is a discrimination.

Amendment No. 8 seeks the deletion of certain provisions of the Bill. The Minister may have answered some of my questions in his earlier reply. I have been briefed and will put the reasons I have been given for this amendment but I will not expect him to rehearse all the material if he takes the view that I imagine he will.

The reason for the proposed deletion is that section 4(4)(b) means that a child born to an international student would not be an Irish citizen even if the student is in Ireland for three years. Similarly, a child born to a migrant worker in Ireland would not be an Irish citizen even if the migrant worker is in Ireland for six years and if four years of that period were spent in Ireland as a student. This has an arbitrary and discriminatory element to it in distinguishing between migrant workers on the one hand and international students on the other. International students are economically active in the State. They have permission to work and to contribute to the economy and often stay on and undertake postgraduate work or, in the case of medical people particularly, they may stay on, work and contribute in that sense through their employment in the State.

Section 4(4)(c) means that the time spent in the asylum system does not count towards residency. Therefore, a child born to a person who has been in the system for four years is still not a citizen. The length of time a person spends in the asylum system is dependent on the expeditiousness with which the Department is capable of dealing with this application. Therefore, it seems inequitable to punish, or at least to appear to punish, the child for the deficiencies of the Department in being unable to process the mother's application during a reasonable period. A person may be in Ireland on humanitarian leave to remain, may have been in Ireland for a total of five years, three of which were in the asylum system, and still the child would not be a citizen.