I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
The sole purpose of this Bill is to regularise the citizenship righs of persons who made valid applications to have details of their births abroad entered in a foreign births entry book at an embassy or consulate abroad or in the Foreign Births Register, at the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin, in the transitional six month period, ending on 31 December 1986, provided for in the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1986, but who, through no fault of their own, were not registered by 31 December 1986.
The Bill does not propose any substantive changes in our citizenship laws. Its scope is limited. It will apply only to approximately 4,000 applicants who are seeking Irish citizenship by virtue of descent from an Irish born person and who applied for registration prior to 31 December 1986 but who were not registered by that date.
It is nevertheless an important Bill for those people affected by it. Many Deputies will have received representations from some of the people concerned. I believe that there is a consensus on both sides of the House that legislation should be enacted to deal with this issue. I can fully appreciate the sense of injustice that these applicants must have felt when they discovered that their applications had not been processed in time and I am confident that this Bill will resolve their problems.
Every person born in Ireland is automatically entitled to Irish citizenship. A person born outside the State to an Irish born parent is also automatically entitled to Irish citizenship. However, where the parent through whom a person born outside Ireland derives citizenship was also born outside Ireland then entitlement to Irish citizenship is dependent on the registration of that person's birth under section 27 of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1956. Section 27 of the 1956 Act provides for the registration of such births in a foreign births entry book kept in every Irish Embassy and Consulate abroad and in a Foreign Births Register kept in the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin.
The law on citizenship by descent is perhaps more easily understandable if we deal with a concrete example. If a woman born in Ireland emigrates for example, to the United States she retains her Irish citizenship. Any children born to her in the United States are automatically entitled to Irish citizenship. However, the rights to Irish citizenship of her grandchildren depend on their births being registered and her great-grandchildren are entitled to Irish citizenship only if the births of the parents, that is the grandchildren of the original Irish emigrant, were registered before the great-grandchildren's births.
Grandchildren, that is third generation Irish, and any further descendants of an Irish emigrant acquire citizenship rights only by virtue of being descended from an Irish born person if their births are registered. Provided the births of the grandchildren and all subsequent descendants are registered under the 1956 Act then the right to Irish citizenship may be maintained indefinitely through the generations. However, if the birth of a grandchild or any subsequent descendant is not registered then the link is broken and subsequent generations will have no right to Irish citizenship by descent.
It must also be kept in mind that a third or subsequent generation applicant has to show that at least one parent was an Irish citizen on the date of birth of the applicant. It can be appreciated, therefore, that the date the parent acquired Irish citizenship is critical in determining whether or not his or her child has a right to acquire Irish citizenship by descent.
In the period 1956-86 this generally would not have posed any great difficulty for an applicant as citizenship deriving from registration was backdated to the date of birth or the coming into force of the 1956 Act, whichever was the later. If the applicant's parent had not registered under section 27 prior to the birth of the applicant, the parent could always register after the birth of the applicant and the citizenship of the parent would apply retrospectively so that the parent would be deemed to have been an Irish citizen at the date of the birth of the applicant. The applicant would, therefore, have been born to an Irish citizen and would be entitled to Irish citizenship which could be obtained by registration under section 27 of the 1956 Act in due course.
The law was changed by the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1986, which was drawn up in consultation with the Department of Foreign Affairs and which provided that the citizenship of a person who, after the passing of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1986, is registered under section 27 shall commence only as and from the date of such registration. This did away with the retrospective aspect of citizenship and gave much greater significance to the actual date of registration. Now if a person's citizenship depends on registration, then his or her children lose their entitlement to acquire Irish citizenship by descent if they are born before that person registers.
Before I continue I consider it appropriate to give some indication of the background to the changes introduced by the 1986 Act. To understand the situation we must go back to the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1935. Under section 2 (2) of the 1935 Act the birth of a person born outside the State to an Irish citizen also born outside the State had to be registered within two years of the birth or else that person lost the right to be a "natural-born citizen of Saorstat Éireann". The law was changed by the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1956. The requirement to register a birth within a set period of time was not maintained but it was apparently the intention that a person would only acquire citizenship on and from the date of registration of the birth. However, in 1966 legal advice was provided to the effect that, for the purposes of derivation of citizenship under section 6 (2) of the 1956 Act, registration of the birth under section 27, as required by section 7 (2) of the 1956 Act, relates back to that person's birth or to the passing of the 1956 Act, whichever is the later.
The opportunity was taken in the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1986, to restore the situation to that originally intended, that is, citizenship would not be backdated. As I have explained, the introduction of the 1986 Act meant that a person who in future registers under section 27 of the 1956 Act only acquires Irish citizenship from the date of registration. As a result children born to such a person prior to registration do not have a right to acquire citizenship by descent as their parent would not have been an Irish citizen at the date of their birth.
The 1986 Act was passed on 1 July 1986 but it included a transitional provision in section 8 which states that, "for the period of 6 months commencing on the passing of this Act, any person who but for this Act could become an Irish citizen may continue to do so". This six month period ended on 31 December 1986. During this six month period the number of applicants for registration received by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Embassies and Consulates abroad reached unprecedented levels. This was particularly so in the case of the Consulate General at New York in the USA, and the Consulate at Johannesburg in South Africa. Emergency measures were taken by the Department of Foreign Affairs to deal with this wave of applications, including employing more staff and sanctioning overtime. The result was that over 4,200 applications were processed in 1986. By comparison 925 were processed in 1983, 1,270 in 1984 and 1,650 in 1985. Of approximately 10,000 further applications received but not attended to by the end of 1986 approximately 6,000 were from third generation applicants, that is, they had a grandparent born in Ireland. They generally had no children and, therefore, were not adversely affected by the deadline. These applicants were registered in 1987 and 1988.
However, 3,773 valid applications were received in 1986 from third and fourth generation applicants which it was not possible to register in the time available. The majority of these outstanding applicants are from South Africa, 2,010, and the United States, 1,341, with smaller numbers from New Zealand and Canada. When the Department of Foreign Affairs realised that the backlog of applications could not all be dealt with by the deadline of 31 December 1986 legal advice was sought. That legal advice was to the effect that applicants could not benefit from the more favourable regime provided for in the transitional provision of the 1986 Act unless the applications were actually registered before 31 December 1986. The right to register many fourth generation applicants was dependent on registration of their parents being effected before 31 December 1986. This is the category of applicants most affected by the failure to register by 31 December 1986. It soon became evident that legislation was desirable to resolve the difficulties in the case of such applications and work on the processing of such applications was suspended on 1 January 1987. The purpose of this legislation is to deal with such cases.
I turn now to the provisions of the Bill which comprises three sections. Section 1 provides for definitions, section 3 provides for the short title, collective citation and construction and section 2 is the operative section. I propose to concentrate on section 2. The heading of the section is "Registration of births outside Ireland" and, as I have explained, this Bill is only concerned with applications for registration made during the transitional six month period provided for in the 1986 Act but which were not registered by the end of the six month period on 31 December 1986.
Section 2 (1) deals with two different circumstances. Section 2 (1) (a) deals with the outstanding 3,773 applications for registration which were made during the transitional period but which have never been registered. It specifically provides that all such valid applications may now be registered. This provision is necessary to cover those fourth generation applicants who but for this Bill would not be eligible to be registered. There were many family applications by parents who were third generation Irish and their children who would be fourth generation. The right of the fourth generation applicants to registration was directly dependent on their parents being registered prior to 31 December 1986.
Section 2 (1) (b) deals with persons who applied for registration during the transitional six month period but who were registered after 31 December 1986. It allows such persons to apply for re-registration if they so wish. Most of these persons are unlikely to apply for re-registration as there is no particular benefit for them. However, I understand that in a small number of cases where there were family applications by parents and their children, the parents on learning that they had not been registered by 31 December 1986 and that their existing children were, therefore, not eligible for registration insisted on their own registration proceeding. The result was that the parents were registered but the children could not be registered because the citizenship of their parents was not backdated. I can well understand the concern of such parents who decided to proceed with registration to ensure that any future children they might have would be entitled to Irish citizenship even if it meant that their existing children might lose out. Section 2 (1) (b) means such parents can remedy the situation by applying for re-registration so that the applications made during the transitional period for the registration of their existing children can then be processed.
Section 2 (2) provides that any person registered or re-registered by virtue of section 2 (1) shall be deemed to have been registered on 1 July 1986. In effect, that will allow every person who made a valid application for registration during the transitional period but who was not registered by 31 December 1986 to be put in the same position that they would have been in if they had been registered during the transitional period. In particular, it will allow the registration of the outstanding 3,773 applications to be completed.
Section (2) refers to 1 July 1986 as the date on which the relevant applications will be deemed to have been registered. The transitional period commenced on 1 July 1986 and ended on 31 December 1986. A date during that period had to be chosen for the purposes of the section and it was decided to choose the date which would be most favourable to applicants, that is the earliest date possible which is 1 July 1986.
This leads me on to subsection (3) of section 2. As we are providing that valid applications made during the transitional period but not registered by 31 December 1986 shall, under the Bill, be deemed to have been registered on 1 July 1986, it seems only consistent that applications actually registered during the transitional period should not be treated any less favourably. Subsection (3) provides, therefore, that such applications shall also be deemed to be registered on 1 July 1986.
In practice this should be of no significance. The only possible circumstance in which the date of registration during the transitional period would be of importance would be if, for example, a woman applied for registration during the transitional period but, after submitting her application and before it was registered, she then gave birth to a child and did not have an opportunity to submit a further application for the registration of that child before 31 December 1986. As far as I am aware no such case exists but to avoid any possibility of a grievance, the Bill provides that all relevant applications are deemed to have been registered on 1 July 1986.
As I have made clear from the outset this Bill has one purpose and one purpose only, that is to resolve the position of persons who made valid applications for registration during the transitional period 1 July 1986 to 31 December 1986 and who were not registered by 31 December 1986 through no fault of their own. The Bill does that and nothing else.
Before I conclude I want to say a few words about a related issue — legislation to provide a statutory framework for refugee and asylum seekers. Over the past few months I promised this legislation in the House. I will be keeping this promise. The Government recently approved a draft scheme of a Bill to deal with this important area of human rights for a disadvantaged body of people in the international community.
This Bill is being drafted at the moment and my aim is to have it published and through the Oireachtas before the summer recess. In advance of the Bill being approved by the Government. I am constrained by what I can say about it at this stage. I can say, however, that the recommendations which have been published of the interdepartmental committee set up to examine this area form the core of my legislative proposals to deal with refugees and asylum seekers. I am confident that when these provisions are enacted into law in the next few months our system for processing refugees and asylum seekers will be open, impartial, humane and will allay the fears of those who have expressed concerns about the present non-statutory system.
I do not want any Member to leave this House today with the mistaken impression that by bringing forward this Bill to deal with the outstanding applications arising out of the 1986 Act I have put the issue of refugees and asylum on the back burner. That is most definitely not the case. I expect to be back here with major reforming legislation in a matter of weeks which will ensure that our international obligations are maintained to the highest standards.
I commend this Bill to the House.