Just as the Government rolled over for the far left on the Euthanasia Bill, it seems that they will do the same on Labour’s Private Members Bill which seeks to overturn the decision of the 2004 referendum on citizenship.
Yesterday in the Seanad, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee told Senator Ivana Bacik that she supported the intent of the Bill and that the Government would facilitate it returning after Christmas to Committee stage and presumably into the Dáil as amended.
McEntee said she agreed with the intent of the proposal and the only caveats were the implications which changing the legislation will have on the extension of EU citizenship to all who are granted Irish citizenship, and on those living in the north.
She was referring to the Labour Bill as “it currently stands,” so presumably the Government will suggest amendments that will satisfy the EU while granting birthright citizenship to anyone born here. We will have to wait and see, but the basic situation is that the decision of the Irish electorate in 2004 is going to be overturned without the people having a say in it.
Indeed, Senator Anne Hoey, a member of a party that currently sits at 3% in the polls and took just over 4% in the February general election – was pretty much like a child at Christmas when she declared that while she had no vote in 2004 like all the plebs who voted Yes, that now she will have a vote along with 220 members of the Oireachtas in casting aside those of the 1,427,520 who wanted to protect Irish citizenship in the referendum.
Not one Senator spoke against the Bill, and as we pointed out recently, not one party represented in the Oireachtas has opposed it. The entire discussion continued that of the narrative of the Irish Times and the NGOs and the far left in depicting the 2004 referendum as based on lies, racism and ignorance. Indeed Sinn Féin Senator Lynn Boylan claimed that the decision to hold it at all, would be akin to the Government deciding to hold a referendum now based on a “racist meme” on social media.
It was clear also that the Migrant Rights Centre had a huge input into the preparation of scripts which all followed the same pattern. All “undocumented” immigrants are fluent Gaeilgorí and fabulous hurlers, frontline health workers, and almost every Senator who spoke had an anecdote supplied by the MRC on the fear under which the “undocumented” live.
Fear of what exactly? McEntee herself boasted about the tiny number of illegal immigrants who are eventually deported and referred to the upcoming registration of some 17,000 – compiled from lists supplied by the MMRC – whose having come here illegally will be set aside.
And if you are resident in Ireland illegally and happen to become one of the non-national criminals who currently make up 23% of the Irish prison population, not to worry because Senator Marie Sherlock declared that even those with convictions, presumably abroad or here or maybe both, should not be deported either. She laughingly ascribed all of this to the need to do away with an “arbitrary system of immigration.”
Another theme of the debate is that immigrants are actually “more Irish than the Irish themselves” as Senator Róisín Garvey declared, and the disparaging of citizenship rights for people of Irish parentage who live abroad. Senator Rebecca Moynihan sneered at these as the beneficiaries of donning the “green rags” on St. Patrick’s Day in the White House. Do Sinn Féin now share this Dublin 4 antipathy to the narrowbacks whose money helped and still helps to put the likes of Lynn Boylan where they are? Or to the Irish Americans and Irish in Britain who put their money into this country in more productive ways than bankrolling the Shinners?
So there you have it. We can only hope that when this comes to the Dáil that there will be some TDs who will recall what the people who elected them overwhelmingly voted for 16 years ago. It will not, however, be enough to prevent this going through. Indeed it is ironic that the only problem that our political elite now have is their concern about what their real bosses in Brussels might think.
That will be overcome by amendment one assumes, which will mean that re-opening the floodgates that were there before 2004, and in a global situation where immigration control is more relevant than ever before, will confine any influx to the Irish state. It might also be noted that it may have uncomfortable consequences for travel between Ireland and Britain post Brexit if the Brits believe that the changes proposed might have a spillover effect across the border and Irish Sea.
Meanwhile, all of this again confirms that on all key issues affecting the future of this country that all of the current political parties could comfortably fit into the one party, with the usual right and left factions that exist in parties like the American Democrats, British Labour, and the centre left and right parties in Europe who similarly sing off the same song sheet.
Time for change, methinks. While there is still time.