Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I will make arrangements for the asylum service to send a letter to the Senator setting out the position in terms of numbers. I do not want to make an exaggerated claim, but there has been a fairly dramatic change in the length of time it is taking, particularly in respect of accelerated country of origin cases.

Senator Norris is proposing that when one is declared a refugee and given the right to remain in the State, and the temporary nature of one's stay is converted into a quasi-permanent right, at that stage the law should apply retrospectively to include the period of time while one's status is being determined in one's permanent residency. This is not done in respect of naturalisation law and I do not propose to do so in this context. Genuine asylum seekers get asylum in Ireland by way of a very elaborate process. If they are here for five years and the situation in their home country does not improve, they can return to the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and seek naturalisation here. At that point, they can have a child born to them before they came to Ireland and who accompanied them, or who was born in Ireland during the first period, or who was born in Ireland at any point up to the point of naturalisation, naturalised. Three years is the period in question in the case of a refugee, not five years, which is a fairly generous regime.

The last point raised relates to a period of humanitarian leave to remain. If one fails in the asylum process and one applies to the Department and receives humanitarian leave to remain, it will count towards the three year period. Humanitarian leave to remain is permission to be here. One is lawfully in Ireland as an asylum seeker; it is not unlawful to be an asylum seeker. However, one is here with the consent of the Minister after one is given humanitarian leave to remain and that period counts towards the period of time necessary either to claim naturalisation or in respect of establishing sufficient residency here to confer citizenship by birth on one's child.

Sometimes this issue slips out of focus. Every child born to a non-national in Ireland, whether an asylum seeker, student or whatever, will either have citizenship by descent of their parents' country or be entitled to be an Irish citizen. For example, a child born to a Chinese student who is here to learn English and working 20 hours a week or whatever will be a citizen of the People's Republic of China. If for whatever reason a child is denied citizenship of a country with which we are dealing, the child will automatically be an Irish citizen. We are not talking about people who will be stateless unprotected citizens. Every child born in Ireland, both before and after this legislation is passed, will either be a citizen of Ireland or a citizen of some other state. For example, if someone comes from Nigeria to Ireland claiming asylum, that child is a Nigerian citizen unless the parents have resided here for three years after the end of the asylum process and the child is born at that point. If the parents remain in Ireland lawfully for a sufficient length of time to become naturalised Irish citizens, they can transform that child into an Irish citizen by applying on a derivative basis arising out of their own naturalisation for their minor children to be citizens of Ireland.

There is no great injustice here. People say that such a child is in limbo or is a second-class citizen. The child is not in that category, no more than a toddler who comes in with a genuine refugee is in limbo in Ireland, at a disadvantage or discriminated against. That is simply not the case. If a refugee brings with him or her three children and another child is born in Ireland during the first year of the refugee status, that child takes the refugee's citizenship by descent, unless there is a problem. These four children have the same nationality. They do not exist in Ireland in some sort of second-class ghetto where the State is unjust to them and they will not exist in that category after the legislation is passed. There is a suggestion that somehow a three year old child will be in a radically different position because he or she was born in Nigeria rather than in the Rotunda. There is not a significant difference in the way the State treats them. However, citizenship derived purely from birth can only happen in the case of parents who have already established a long-term connection with Ireland, which is the three year period. This is what the people voted for and it is a fair law.

I made the point on Second Stage that ours is one of the most generous laws in the European Union. There is another country in the European Union which has a variant of jus soli, namely, the French Republic. A child born to Algerian parents in France gets an absolute entitlement to apply for French citizenship when he or she is 18 years of age. The parents of a child who is lawfully in Ireland at that stage would long since have been naturalised and be full Irish citizens if they so chose. This is the most liberal of European countries in terms of the jus soli principle. After this law is enacted, I do not believe any other country in Europe will be as generous as we are in handing out citizenship to parents, including their children, who have been here for a relatively short period. Senator Walsh said recently that few, if any, countries in Europe hand out citizenship by virtue of birth on the generous basis we will when the law is enacted.