Gerald Nash (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am glad my colleague, Senator Conway, is back in the Chamber. I have great time and respect for him and have known him for a long time. It is not very often that I disagree with him fundamentally. Senator Conway said earlier that discretion is not a bad thing, but a system that is based entirely on discretion is a bad thing. That is the reality of the situation we have now. It makes for bad decisions, bad precedent and inconsistency.

Residency status in Ireland should not be determined by the parish pump. It should be determined by the Parliament. That is what we are trying to do this evening. If a neighbour on my street in Drogheda got into a situation like this and his or her child was to be deported, he or she would be bunched. He or she would be in a very difficult set of circumstances because there is no Fine Gael Minister in Louth. It is one of the few constituencies in the country where, under this new politics arrangement, no Minister exists. My neighbours would not be able to develop a campaign to appeal to a Minister.

I was looking earlier at the Democratic Programme, a foundational document published on the day of the first sitting of our national Parliament in 1919. We will celebrate that centenary in January. The document was written by the then leaders of the Labour Party. It states: "It shall be the first duty of the Government of the Republic to make provision for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the children, to secure that no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing or shelter, but that all shall be provided within the means and facilities requisite for their proper education and training as Citizens of a Free [...] Ireland."

Our attitude to children falls short in many respects but I cannot find a greater example of falling short than this one. It is outrageous that we are in this position. Senator Bacik and my Labour Party colleagues propose a very considered and balanced solution to a key problem. If the Minister of State allows the Bill to progress to the next Stage, we will work with him and his colleagues to finesse it and address any technical issues. The problem, however, is that the issues the Minister of State or his officials may have are not just theoretical or technical but fundamental. It pains me to say that because I have always known the Minister of State to be a compassionate and humane public representative. I know many of his colleagues to be the same.

I have a very clear recollection of the 2004 constitutional amendment. I was speaking to my colleague, Senator Ó Ríordáin, about it earlier. That was my second local election. I won a seat from Drogheda corporation on Louth County Council in 1999 and defended it successfully in 2004. Much of that election debate and the canvassing campaign was about addressing invented issues. People felt they had free reign to debate issues in a dog-whistle way. They felt they had licence to do so because of the referendum.

I have listened very intently to Senator McDowell, the former Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, who introduced that constitutional amendment. His contention is that the ambition of the referendum was to develop a framework whereby we could properly regulate citizenship, residency and so on. That is what this Bill is trying to achieve. Unfortunately, we had to wait 14 years to respond as a Legislature. That was an awful campaign. I remember people holding views that did not hold water at all, for instance that migrants were coming to this country because they were getting free cars or were getting their cars insured. Young women were said to be getting their hair braided for free. It was nonsense that did not stand up to the slightest scrutiny but people felt they had a licence to expound those kinds of views. They were views I had not heard before and that were stoked up because of the referendum, which appealed to the lowest base instincts of what I thought would be a minority of people.We know, however, that the vast majority of people supported the referendum. If I had the opportunity, I would propose that the referendum result be overturned and the conversation changed. We have not yet had that opportunity but we may in the future. In the meantime, we should make the best use of the opportunities we have in Parliament to address some of the key problems we face as a society, namely, providing for citizenship and residency rights for children who born in this country and who have nowhere else to call home. Their home is Ireland, which should remain to be the case, and their legal situation should be supported and protected by laws passed in Parliament, rather than being influenced by the parish pump.