Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Speaking on behalf of the Sinn Féin Seanad team, I thank the Labour Party for bring forward the Bill. Sinn Féin favours restoring the full right to citizenship and believes that, 16 years later, it is time to revisit the decision that was taken, especially when a recent poll indicated that 71% of Irish people would support it being revisited. That said, we welcome the conversation today on the Bill because we all know the current immigration system is patently unjust and that there is a significant amount of work to do to right the injustices in it. We need to provide a way for children who are undocumented to regularise their immigration status.

The House has heard today that under the current system there is no path to citizenship for children who are born here to undocumented parents, children who came to Ireland to join undocumented parents or children whose immigration permission has lapsed. We have heard about children who have grown up here and joined local GAA teams and gone to local schools but who are all in a legal limbo and living in fear. They cannot travel or access third level education. Without permission to work, they very often end up in exploitative jobs. In effect, the current immigration system prevents these children from reaching their full potential. They are reduced to participating in society while that society refuses to accept them in full or to recognise their full right to be here. They live under the threat of deportation to another country they have never called home. It is an unspeakably cruel system.

Senator Hoey is correct that this has a significant knock-on impact in terms of their sense of belonging. Ireland is an outlier among its European peers in that regard. Research carried out by the Migration Policy Institute shows that 24 of the 27 EU member states provide some way for undocumented children to regularise their status.It is time that Ireland caught up. We have heard the heartbreaking appeals and speak of primary school children who are campaigning for their friend to be allowed to remain the country and being forced to plead with a Minister for Justice not to deport that friend. These are only the high-profile cases. There are many others that do no capture the public attention or do not manage to tug at the heartstrings of Ministers or embarrass them into action. It is completely inappropriate that decisions such as these are being left at the discretion of a Minister.

It is worth putting on the record and recalling how we have ended up in this situation in the first instance. It is because the then Government misled the Oireachtas in 2004 into believing that there was a crisis of maternity tourism in order to force the referendum on the issue. There were claims that there was a spike in anchor babies being born. Senator Bacik rightly pointed out in her article in The Journal that the Government of the day inflated those numbers in that the statistics for babies born to non-Irish mothers with Irish fathers as well as babies born to parents with EU citizenship who did not benefit in terms of immigration status were all wrapped up in them. The Government decided to hold a referendum on a fundamental constitutional right to citizenship on the basis of little more than a rumour. It is akin to the current Government effectively holding a referendum having seen a racist meme on Facebook. We have seen this move before. A crisis is invented that plays on the fears and whips up the anger that is then directed towards the vulnerable scapegoat and away from where the failure lies, which is usually at the door of Government. It is the classic move from the reactionary playbook, one that we would all do well to learn from.

At the time of the 2004 referendum, the then Minister for Justice and Equality stood in this House and stated that by pandering to right-wing elements, the centre could halt their rise. I would like to point out that we do not defeat racism by pandering to racists. Racism must be resisted everywhere. The far right is on the rise in this country. We would do well to remain vigilant and not to pander to it. We have a chance now to undo some of the wrongs of the past and embrace all of the benefits that immigration brings to our society.

I thank the Labour Party for bringing forth this Bill, but we do need to revisit in its entirety the decision made in 2004.