Naturalisation and Citizenship: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-24 ============================================================ Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland I welcome the Minister of State here today. I wish to make a few comments about what he has told us today is his view of this legislation. First, as the Minister of State said, citizenship is not the right to carry an Irish passport. Citizenship is not the right to move from Ireland to other countries in the EU and to reside there under EU freedom of movement provisions. Citizenship is not a purely transactional matter which arises from the fact you have been physically located on Irish territory for a certain period. It is not some form of ATM transaction in which "I have been here for five years and I demand to be regarded as an Irish citizen". That is a complete misunderstanding of citizenship. When we look at the Constitution, and sometimes people do not, Article 9 states the fundamental political duty of citizenship is fidelity to the Irish nation and loyalty to the State. These are the most fundamental duties of citizens but there are a whole series of other duties, such as the obligation to serve on a jury, as the Minister of State mentioned, or the obligation to serve in the Defence Forces if an emergency arose. These are things that are attributes of citizenship. Citizenship also is nationality. You are joining not merely a concept or construct such as the State and achieving certain rights in that sense but you are also saying, "I want to be part of the Irish nation and I am going to be faithful to the Irish nation. I want to be regarded as a citizen of the Irish State and I am going to be loyal to that State. It is now a state to which I am pledging my loyalty." Therefore, the idea of saying, "I have been here five years. Give me citizenship", is completely misconceived. The fact you live in Ireland for any particular period may or may not entitle you to citizenship but at the very least, if you become a citizen you have the right under Irish law to participate - if you reside in Ireland - in referendums and elections, to stand for public office and to decide on issues of fundamental importance to the Irish people and their future, submitted by way of constitutional amendment to the people. You have these rights. However, the correlative obligations are that you acknowledge that this is your state and this is your nationality. Nationality means something. You cannot just simply be an isolated person who cannot speak the language and who stays in a remote community which has nothing to do with Ireland, its traditions, values or whatever. People have to understand this. While I fully understand you may want to have a travel document on the same basis as everybody else who is an Irish citizen, by the same token, that is not the same as saying you are signing on for all the complex obligations to your fellow citizens that being an Irish citizen entails. The heads of the Bill the Minister of State has mentioned have been drafted and the Bill is going to the justice committee for pre-legislative scrutiny. I look forward to it being examined in detail there and I will participate in that examination as a member of the joint committee on justice. I will say this: I do not accept the proposition that anybody who is in Ireland automatically qualifies for an expectation of citizenship simply by virtue of the fact the law is as it is at the moment and cannot change. I do not accept that proposition. The Minister of State is entitled to bring in legislation that will affect some people's rights and will extend the period for some people on residence grounds to remain in Ireland. However, I ask the Minister of State to consider - and we can tease it out at the justice committee - the position of individuals who are married to Irish citizens and who are bringing up a family in Ireland with an Irish citizen. I ask him to consider whether an exception could be made in their case such that the existing residence requirements would suffice, in addition to the language and civic educational requirements he is introducing. In other words, if somebody has been here for some time and they have made all their plans as a family based on one of the members of the family, the parent, being an Irish citizen, there could be injustice in saying, "Sorry, but your plans are going to have to change" because we are going to demand that in addition to membership of this family and co-parenting with an Irish citizen, they will have to wait for another three years, or whatever it is, to become a citizen on top of satisfying the language qualification, etc. I make the point that whereas I do not accept the proposition that the existing time periods are cast in stone and create a legitimate expectation for anybody in Ireland that they will not be changed contrary to their wishes, there could be injustices and problems for families where, for instance, one of the spouses is denied Irish citizenship unnecessarily on the basis of this change. I ask the Minister of State to bear that in mind as something we should look at carefully when we come to pre-legislative scrutiny. I have one last thing to say. The Irish people are not unreasonable on these matters. In 2004, I remember people said the referendum was racist when it brought Irish law into line with the rest of Europe, and closed a loophole whereby a person expelled from the United Kingdom could, by going to Northern Ireland, have a child there, then go back to England and say they were an EU citizen and could not be got rid of under the Chen and Zambrano case law and all the EU jurisprudence that followed. It was not racist; it was sensible. It has done no wrong to anybody and has done a lot of good to maintain people's confidence that citizenship was not going to be made into a totally artificial status being exploited by people with no interest in this country at all and who never actually stepped into the jurisdiction of the Twenty-six Counties at any stage, but were, in fact, foreign nationals living in Britain. I welcome this proposed Bill. I think it is sensible. Nobody can claim to be part of the Irish nation if they cannot understand the languages in which we operate. You cannot be a citizen and participate in an election if you do not know what the election is about. You cannot be a juror if you cannot speak the languages. These things are so obvious when you think about it. We have been lax in the past but there is nothing racist or retrogressive about making a sensible law. In that light, I ask the Minister of State to bear in mind the one exception of which I have spoken. There should be some flexibility for those people who are in a family situation, co-parenting with an Irish citizen, and who should be in a position not to have to wait a further three years if they can satisfy the other criteria proposed to be brought into law. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-09-24/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:50+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-24