Funferal

MDH on citizenship

Michael D Higgins’ speech launching Labour’s campaign against the referendum on citizenship is inspiring and informative – closing with the much quoted “I cannot accept that it is desirable or just to introduce a change that will determine that two children, born in the same maternity ward on the same day, will enjoy different legal and constitutional rights.” – and I include it below.

The old common law tradition we share with more than 40 other countries represented by the legal principle of ‘born on a rock, a citizen of the rock’, allows for a human approach to the whole question of immigration and citizenship. It is something that has served us well, without producing any unmanageable problems and it is an approach that we should be loathe to change.
This proposed amendment removes certainty from the allocation of citizenship, inserts all sorts of dubious conditionalities and will have the effect of reducing the rights of the child in a universal sense.
Ireland, of all countries, having sent large numbers of successive generations of our own people abroad in search of a better life should continue to with a humane and tolerant approach to immigration and citizenship. Ensure that this can happen by rejecting this amendment.
I am very pleased that the Labour Party has chosen to launch its campaign for a no vote in the citizenship referendum here in the city of Galway. Galway has always been a city marked by tolerance and where diversity is respected and it is appropriate that it is here that the Labour Party should launch our campaign to oppose a constitutional amendment that flies in the face of these values
I think it is a great pity that we have had to launch this campaign at all. For this is a constitutional amendment for which no convincing case has been made. We are being asked to go to the polls on June 11th to make an important change to our constitution but this is an amendment for which, as our posters says, its proponents have produced no facts, no figures and no reasons.
Over/-
Any change to our constitution is a potentially important development that can, as we have seen in the past, throw up unexpected consequences or results. The constitution should only be changed after careful consideration and where a compelling case has been made that an amendment is necessary. Neither of these criteria applies in the case of this amendment.
If Minister McDowell genuinely believed that there was a problem with the existing provision in our constitution that extends the right of Irish citizenship to everyone born on the island of Ireland ? and they have produced no evidence to suggest that there is ? then the correct approach would have been to approach the issue in a non-politically partisan way.
The correct approach would have been to request the Oireachtas All Party Committee on the Constitution to consider the issue in a calm and considered way. The Committee would have heard submissions from all interested groups, such as the Human Rights Commission and the political parties in Northern Ireland before producing a Green Paper on all aspects of citizenship.
The government and Minister McDowell in particular chose a different course. The saw a chance for party political advantage in unilaterally proposing an amendment that they believed would be popular with sections of their own supporters and would thus ? they hope ? ameliorate the political hiding that this unpopular government could expect to get a mid term elections.
Not only have no convincing statistics been produced to suggest that this amendment is necessary, the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, has repeated changed his stated reasons for the amendment since he first excitedly announced the proposal on March 10th.
He told us originally that the Masters of the Dublin Maternity hospitals were pleading with him to change the constitution. Then we were told that maternity hospitals were being overwhelmed by the late arrival of pregnant non-nationals. Still later we were told that our arrangements were out of kilter with the legal and constitutional position of our EU partners.
One by one, these claims have been shown to be groundless. The Masters totally contradicted the Minister. When official figures were finally extracted from the Minister they showed that only a tiny proportion of births were made up of late arrivals from abroad.
And we know from replies to parliamentary questions that no representations have been received from any other EU state suggesting that our citizenship regime represented a problem for them or that they wanted to see it changed.
During the debate in the Dail, the Minister was reduced to telling us of things he was aware of ‘anecdotally’. What is beyond dispute is that anecdotes are no basis on which to make such a fundamentally important decision as to change our constitution.
For the underhand and dishonest manner in which it is being put forward, I will be urging people to vote no on June 11th. For their decision to ignore the views of the Human Rights Commission and the political parties in Northern Ireland, I will be urging people to vote no on June 11th.
But I will also be urging people to vote no for another reason. I cannot accept that it is desirable or just to introduce a change that will determine that two children, born in the same maternity ward on the same day, will enjoy different legal and constitutional rights.