Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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Question 169: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the policy of his Department in circumstances where a person from outside the EU has been resident here for more than three years, has Irish born children and wishes to be joined by their spouse; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12361/07]

Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)
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Foreign national parents of Irish citizen children do not have an automatic right to reside in the State solely by virtue of such parentage. An administrative scheme for processing applications for permission to remain in the State based on parentage of Irish citizen children finished in February 2003 subsequent to the Supreme Court's decision (23 January 2003) in the L & O cases. On 18 July 2003 I announced the Government's policy in regard to the applications for permission to remain which were outstanding. The policy included a decision that there could be no presumption in favour of allowing parents granted permission to remain to be joined in the State by other family members (including other children).

On 15 January 2005 I announced the revised arrangements for the processing of claims for permission to remain in the State from foreign national parents of Irish children born prior to 1 January 2005. That scheme, commonly referred to as the IBC/05 Scheme, finished in March 2005. All those who availed of the IBC/05 Scheme signed declarations indicating their acceptance that permission to remain granted to them under that scheme would not confer any entitlement or legitimate expectation on any other person, whether related to them or not, to enter the State. Applications from a number of parents, other than the parents granted permission to remain, to be allowed enter and/or remain in the State under the scheme were refused on the basis that certain conditions of the scheme were not satisfied. In November, 2006 the High Court ruled in favour of a number of those persons and quashed the decisions to refuse their applications. The High Court decision is the subject of an appeal to the Supreme Court.

The general policy of the Government, where requests for family reunification in this area are concerned, has been and remains that permission for the spouse to enter and/or remain in the State is considered on a case by case basis but that there is no automatic right for a spouse to enter the State to join the family in question.

If the Deputy has a specific case in mind he should contact the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service who can advise on the policy and procedures in regard to the case.