Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Jack Chambers, for attending. The foreign births register is a particular register held by the Department of Foreign Affairs and is also known as the citizenship by descent register. Its normal use is in the context of passports being claimed by people who are perhaps the children of Irish citizens living abroad, and it is the method by which they obtain an Irish passport. However, it also has particular uses and requirements within Ireland. For example, if an individual becomes a naturalised Irish citizen and their child is born abroad, that child needs to go on the foreign births register.

There is a particular issue in regard to surrogacy, given that children born by international surrogacy, by virtue of the way it is, are born abroad. DNA is taken at the time of the birth. That is matched to the Irish citizen biological father and the child obtains an emergency travel document to come home to Ireland with the family. The entitlement is the fact that this is the biological child of an Irish citizen. If that Irish citizen happens to be a naturalised Irish citizen, the child, in order to obtain a passport, must then be entered onto the foreign births register.

By the time the family get to make that application, they have already had judicial oversight of all of their documentation because that father has had to apply to the courts for a parental order for the setting aside of consent of the surrogate in order to proceed. In itself, that is a process that can take anything from a couple of months to 18 months or a couple of years. The particular cases that I am concerned about are ones where the application has been made for the child to be entered onto the foreign births register, but well over a year later, there is no sign of that child being issued with a passport.

The website itself states that it is going to take a nine-month process, and I understand there are legalities. If I am applying from a foreign country with regard to my father, my grandfather, my mother or my grandmother, I understand that all of that needs to be verified. However, we have a situation where there are children for whom all of the documentation has already received judicial oversight in the country, and they are just slotted onto the list. They are living here but they cannot visit relations abroad or go abroad. I know of one particular case where a father had applied, and I am not even mentioning second fathers and mothers because we do not have legal standing in Ireland at the moment, although we will soon, hopefully. In the case of that one child in particular, the couple were desperate to get home to Lithuania to visit a dying great-grandmother of the baby. She died, but there was no way of expediting the process and no way of pushing them up the list, even though everything that is before the Department of Foreign Affairs has already had judicial oversight.

There is an appallingly long delay in the Department of Foreign Affairs. In instances like that, it is an unwarranted delay. It is a very straightforward system. The people are living here in the country and could go in to give oaths or do whatever is needed. There is no problem with the documentation but they are not getting anywhere fast. In one case, we are now 13 months down the road and no one will even answer a phone to this guy, send him an email or do anything. Either there is a lack of staffing or a lack of willingness - one of the two - and it needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.