Rushed legislation risks leaving us with 'second-class' citizens
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I am a proud Cork woman and Irish citizen, albeit one that was born somewhere else and chose Cork as her home.
I became an Irish citizen in a ceremony in March, 2020 — just before all our lives were turned upside down by the pandemic. At the citizenship ceremony, Justice Bryan MacMahon made a point to say that there were no second-class citizens in Ireland, but a Bill that is going through the Oireachtas makes me question this.
The Government rushed through amendments to the process for revoking Irish citizenship of naturalised citizens, and the issues with these changes are both of form and substance.
In terms of form, the Minister for Justice saw fit to introduce changes to a most critical issue without allowing time or space to engage with them. The proposed changes to legislation that sets out the process to revoke citizenship were an attempt to patch-up a flawed process through last-minute amendments to a miscellaneous bill.
In 2021, the Supreme Court found the current citizenship revocation process unconstitutional. In response, the government should have introduced a self-standing bill that would have progressed through standard parliamentary scrutiny, which would have also allowed civil society to constructively engage with the substantive matters involved.
Instead, the minister has rushed amendments through an end-of-term miscellaneous provisions bill — The Courts, Civil Law, Criminal Law and Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2024). Yes, quite the mouthful.
These amendments were introduced at the latter stages of the legislative process, which meant that there was no pre-legislative scrutiny, no second stage debate, and members of the Dáil were not able to bring forward amendments on the substantive issues raised in the original 1956 legislation — Dáil members could only amend the government’s own amendments.
The minister, attempting to defend her approach, argues that this process has only been activated in a handful of cases — eight times in total. If this power is used only extremely sparingly, then why did she feel compelled to rush it through in the last week of session, three years after the Supreme Court’s decision?
In addition to the government’s extremely problematic legislative approach, the amendments risk not addressing the concerns of the Supreme Court and introduces very tight timeframes for those affected by revocation.
In 2021, in the Damache case, the Supreme Court found the current citizenship revocation process unconstitutional, as it was not sufficiently independent and lacked sufficient safeguards for those affected. In the words of Ms Justice Dunne “high standards of natural justice” must apply to the revocation of citizenship.
It is not immediately clear that the amendments proposed by the Minister for Justice will meet those high standards of natural justice. The proposed legislation would only give 28 days to someone affected to make representations to the minister about the proposed revocation of their citizenship and then only 14 days to request an inquiry.
Considering it took about 18 months for the minister to approve my own application for citizenship, there is a major imbalance for those who face the very serious consequences of having theirs revoked.
This is an extremely tight timeline and does not give the people affected enough time to understand the gravity of the matter and look for help if they need it. Also, there is no specific entitlement to legal aid.
Even if there have only been eight persons affected by revocation proceedings in the past, and an unknown number in the future, each and every one of them is entitled to fair procedures. And, if there are doubts around the fairness of these procedures, someone else might take the minister to task and take a case all the way to the Supreme Court, again.
Lastly, the amendments introduced by the minister present a missed opportunity to address wider policy questions. Right now, the legislation allows for the minister to revoke citizenship on the basis that someone has shown insufficient fidelity to the State — something that is vague, spurious and open to abuse.
I am not saying that it will necessarily be abused by this government, but what about future governments?
In places like Canada and New Zealand, they have moved to remove grounds like fidelity or national security from their statutes on revoking citizenship, as these are matters better dealt with by the criminal system.
Current legislation also permits the minister to not disclose the reasons for proposing a revocation where she believes that there are national security grounds for the revocations… without access to the rationale, how can an individual understand or challenge the State’s case?
Allowing grounds like this to remain in place mean that we will have two tiers of citizenship: the State cannot revoke the citizenship of a natural born citizen for overt acts of disloyalty yet it can where a naturalised citizen commits these same overt acts — whatever the minister of the time deems disloyalty to be.
Failing to address this, means that my citizenship and that of thousands of others who have lived, loved and worked in Ireland is only contingent and at the mercy of future ministers for justice.
The current legislation also fails to introduce any safeguards around statelessness. Ireland is party to not one but two international conventions on statelessness, the 1954 and 1961 Statelessness conventions.
Yet, despite our international commitments to prevent and address statelessness, the legislation does not offer any protections for those who, having their Irish citizenship revoked, would be rendered stateless.
I believe that Ireland needs to have a process for revoking citizenship, but the process needs to be fair and meet the requirements of natural justice. And the law that puts this process in place must stand scrutiny and not be introduced in this furtive and rushed manner.
The Ireland I declared my fidelity and loyalty to, the one I am a proud citizen of, has to be better than this.