Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This legislation is being rushed through. It is wrong in principle to bring a Bill to Dáil Éireann to deal with adding new judges, tinkering with the firearms Act and so on and to then throw into it an entirely new provision on the revocation of citizenship. It is wrong in principle to attempt to do that. Whatever urgency there is in dealing with the Damache case, that urgency has existed since the decision was given and it could have been dealt with separately. The second thing is the provisions of the Bill are highly suspect from the point of view that the committee being established is not sufficiently independent and demonstrated to be independent of the Minister. The idea that the Minister of the day - and I have been Minister - can just choose four people and a retired judge and pop them into a room to deal with this is not what we should be doing on a matter of this importance. It should not be totally reserved for the courts and there should be circumstances in which the revocation of citizenship can take place in a different way. Citizenship fraudulently obtained should be immediately liable to be reversed. I do not think anybody would have a problem with that proposition but I do not think this is right at all. There is not even a guarantee of legal aid for a person who will have their citizenship investigated.

The phrase "fidelity to the State" is an odd abstraction from Article 9 of the Constitution, which refers to "Fidelity to the nation and loyalty to the State". It is a vague charge to make against anybody that they have demonstrated a lack of fidelity to the State. I am deeply worried about that.

The statelessness issue is the least of my worries because if somebody has obtained citizenship by fraudulent means, that cannot really say they would be stateless without the fruits of their fraud. That is not a significant issue. Thousands of people have obtained a certificate of naturalisation. To tell them that they have a question mark over their citizenship by virtue of a criterion such as lack of fidelity to the State, and that a Minister could convene a committee to uphold or revoke the his or her decision, seems a very strange law to bring in. If this was not being rushed through, I do not think anybody would have said this was the best way to deal with it. Although there is judicial review available to everyone, the time limit provided for is that when the committee decides the citizenship has been revoked, the person has two or three days in which to get out of the country or challenge it. That is pretty horrific because the citizenship stands revoked.

I like to be constructive and supportive of a Department of which I was once Minister but this Bill is being railroaded through, having been mutated beyond recognition when going through the Dáil. It asks us to make far-reaching constitutional decisions about the future and status of people who have been naturalised in circumstances where we should not be asked to do that. Therefore, I have to oppose the Bill.