Dan Boyle
Question:36 Mr. Boyle asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform if any of her European Union ministerial counterparts have made a request that Irish citizenship laws be altered. [17729/04]
View answerThursday, 8 July 2004
Questions (44)
Written answers
No formal representations have been made to me by my EU ministerial counterparts concerning our citizenship laws.
The Deputy shall be aware of the Chen case referred to the European Court of Justice by the UK Immigration Appellate Authority. In the course of its proceedings the UK Government disputed the court's jurisdiction to give a ruling on the matters that had been submitted to it. In that context, it argued that the only element of the case that was not internal to the UK was the child's Irish nationality. Its view was that her nationality was acquired as "the result of subterfuge resorted to by Mr. and Mrs. Chen, which should be seen as an abuse of law." The advocate general, in his opinion, stated:
The fact is that the problem, if problem there be, lies in the criterion used by the Irish legislation for granting nationality, the jus soli, which lends itself to the emergence of situations like the one at issue in this case. In order to avoid such situations, the criterion could have been moderated by the addition of a condition of settled residence of the parent within the territory of the island of Ireland.