Progressive Democrats campaign launch: The European Court of Justice will give rights to illegal immigrants to work to support their Irish-born children unless the Constitution is changed, the Progressive Democrats have warned.
In a preliminary ruling last month, the Luxembourg court's Advocate General found that a Chinese child, Catherine Zhu Chen, born in Belfast, had the right to stay in Wales because she had an Irish passport and could be supported by her mother.
Speaking at the launch of the party's campaign for a Yes vote in the June 11th citizenship referendum, the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, said the scope of this ruling was likely to be extended in coming years.
He predicted that the court would not allow the removal of an Irish-born child if the child's parents were denied the opportunity to support it because they were not entitled to seek work.
He said the court might grant such parents the right to work, regardless of the State's work-permit rules.
Progressive Democrats TDs such as Ms Liz O'Donnell have been far from keen up to now to campaign for a Yes vote. However, Ms O'Donnell was present for yesterday's launch.
While the party had printed 100,000 leaflets calling for a Yes vote, the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, acknowledged that most attention would go on the local-election campaign.
The passage of the citizenship referendum would not mean that some children born here would be left stateless, she said. "If any child born in Ireland to non-national parents is not entitled to any other citizenship, then he or she will have Irish citizenship there and then," she said.
Irish and EU citizenship were valuable commodities: "There is an incentive for people to come to Ireland and acquire Irish citizenship and European citizenship for their children.
"It is not a theoretical incentive, it is a reality of today, as demonstrated by the Chen case. People naturally respond to this incentive. We cannot and should not blame them for that. It is an intention that we have created in our Constitution - unintentionally, in my view.
"But we are also free to remove it for the future without diminishing anyone's existing rights," the Tánaiste added. However, she said, the fundamental rights of all those living in the State, whether they were citizens or not, would not be affected.
"Ireland will take its international human-rights obligations very seriously and will act upon them. Ireland will be generous to the poorer people and nations of the world.
Under Mr McDowell's proposal, non-national children will get citizenship if their parents have lived legally on the island of Ireland for three of the past four years. "The proposal is a generous one," Mr McDowell said. "In Germany, for example, parents must have been living in the country for eight years before their children are eligible for German citizenship.
He added: "Children must give up their claim to the citizenship of other countries once they acquire German citizenship.
"In Ireland, dual citizenship is permitted and nobody has to turn their backs on their country of origin or give up their claim to citizenship there," he said.
Maternity doctors had told him that 40 per cent of all births to non-national mothers in Dublin hospitals happened because of the desire for a passport. "This is a substantial figure," said the Minister, who acknowledged hospitals do not ask each mother about her reasons for giving birth here. "They have never conducted such interviews and shouldn't. Mothers have other things on their mind. But the overwhelming evidence is that a very significant proportion is motivated primarily, in my view, by citizenship concerns," he said.
