Terry Leyden (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It will allow our friends in Northern Ireland to travel the length and breadth of Europe and beyond with an Irish European passport. The same applies to Irish people in Britain. A total of 90,000 people born in England applied for and received Irish passports over the past decade, while 150,000 people born in Northern Ireland are entitled to passports through parents or grandparents and they applied for them in the last ten years. This will be a major change. I also hope that under the negotiations, they will not be excluded because of their address. An Irish passport is a European passport and that is how it will remain. We will fight to ensure that any person who holds an Irish passport will be entitled to full access to the European Union. This must be part of the negotiations.