I heard the advice from the Minister's official, which was, "Effectively, yes". Therefore, anyone married to an Irish citizen can, effectively, reside here. The question then is about the conditions under which they get citizenship.
My problem is that the two situations are extremely different. In one case, a person is married to an Irish citizen and is, therefore, part of an Irish family and is, by definition, in most cases the mother or father of children who are Irish citizens if they were born here.
I have no problem dealing with abuse. The engineer in me rebels against the idea of solving an undefined problem. The intelligent approach to any problem is to quantify it first. I spend a month at the beginning of first year chemical engineering telling my students not to start solving a problem until they know what it is. The Minister says he does not know how big the problem is but he knows it is there.
I have a constitutional right to freedom of speech, as does every citizen of this State. There is no doubt that right is abused. However, the fact that a right is abused is not a reason to abolish it. That is the fundamental point. If this were carried through to other areas, the Minister would have an absolute discretion to decide who could exercise the right to freedom of speech because people abuse that right scandalously. The fact that a right is abused is no justification for abolishing it. The right to trial by jury, the right to silence and the right to use an alibi are abused but there is no reason to abolish them. Similarly, the right to citizenship by marriage is abused. However, I do not believe it is abused on a very great scale and, even if it is, the entire resources of the Government of this State cannot, or have not bothered, to quantify it.
We could deal with the genuine issue, which is abuse by people outside the State for the most part, by the conditions the Minister has inserted. However, the Minister should not deal with it by the removal, not of the right of the person to be naturalised but of the right of an Irish citizen to have his or her spouse treated properly. That is what is being taken away. We are saying to Irish citizens who marry non-nationals that, even if they meet reasonable conditions, we will still not give them any right to citizenship, just because other non-citizens living in the State have no absolute right. That situation is entirely different. There is a reasonable presumption that people who have been in a subsisting marriage for three years are here for the long haul.
The fair balance to deal with the Minister's problem – which he cannot quantify but which I accept he believes is real – is to tighten the conditions that must be met but to make them objective conditions. In other words, while the Minister must be satisfied, reasons must be given if he is not satisfied. People can then either appeal that decision or meet the conditions in a second application.
The Minister is essentially saying he cannot be certain he has thought up every possible condition and, therefore, he wants to reserve this right. The Bill requires an applicant to be of full age, good character, married for three years, in a recognised marriage, living together as husband and wife, have at the time of the application one year's continuous residence, have during the four years immediately preceding that period a total of two years residence, intend in good faith to continue to reside here etc. Those are enough hoops to put someone who meets those conditions through.
While one in every thousand might still abuse the situation, Irish people's rights are important. An Irish citizen has a right to be certain that his or her spouse has the right to become a citizen. For example, if the spouse were refused citizenship and the Irish citizen died, a person with no children who had lived in this State for 20 years could lose the right to reside in this State because his or her spouse had died. Imagine that prospect for an Irish citizen. A person could be refused citizenship for reasons about which we do not know at the Minister's absolute discretion.
Irish citizens are entitled to certainty. We can debate the nuances of that certainty and the degree to which there must be a tightening up. That would be a useful and interesting debate, particularly, as I said, if we had some evidence of the scale of abuse. However, there is no room for negotiation on the removal of the certainty which Irish citizens used to have. That is the issue and the reason I put down my amendment.
