I can confirm that the report of the review group on investment based naturalisation in Ireland was brought by me before Government in July of this year. I arranged for its publication on 4 August and a number of copies were placed in the Oireachtas Library at that time. In addition, I issued a press statement which was widely reported in the media.
Before proceeding, I want to make a brief comment about the investment based naturalisation scheme and the principle behind it. The scheme was introduced in 1988. It is on the record of the House that it was put in place on the initiative of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Bruton, who first suggested it in 1986. The basic idea behind it, as everybody knows, was that Irish citizenship could be conferred, through the naturalisation process, on non-nationals who were prepared to invest in Irish businesses for the purposes of creating or maintaining jobs.
As Deputies are aware, I have always been opposed to the principle behind this scheme. I have no difficulty with the Irish state according rights of residence and, in due course, citizen ship on non-nationals who come here to establish businesses and employment and who intend in good faith to become full members of our community. However, I disagree with the privilege of Irish citizenship being bartered to investors who have little or no connection with Ireland and who have no plans to strengthen their connections.
That said, however, it is the case that, like many Deputies on all sides of this House, I was approached on a number of occasions in an effort to secure all-party agreement on particular applications, which involved significant job saving and job creation investment and which had significant support from State agencies. In some such instances, following the significant changes to the scheme in 1994 in the wake of the Masri controversy, I indicated that I would not oppose such applications.
The basic principle behind the scheme, which is the subject of this question, was not its only problem. A major flaw was that it was not statute based. The operating rules governing the scheme – such as they were – were essentially a set of administrative guidelines, which were flexible and were flexibly operated. They also depended on a very loose and, in my view, questionable interpretation of the 1956 Act. The report I published in August shows that this flexibility, or looseness of process, applied in many cases and was by no means confined to the case which is the subject of the Deputy Rabbitte's question.
In the context of recent controversy concerning the appropriateness of the appointment of Ray Burke as a Minister in the previous Government, the Taoiseach asked me to examine the file relating to this case and I agreed to do so. The particular file is currently with the Moriarty tribunal. All the passport for investment files in respect of persons naturalised under the scheme prior to 1997 were sought by the tribunal and a copy of the file was left in my Department. I compared this to the one in the possession of the tribunal and have found that it is a correct and true copy.
