The right of non-national parents of Irish-born children to apply for Irish residency should be reinstated, Sister Stanislaus Kennedy told an Oireachtas committee yesterday.
Sister Stanislaus, who is chair of the Immigrant Council of Ireland, was addressing the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, which is considering January's Supreme Court decision that non-national parents of Irish-born children and their non-national siblings were not entitled to live in this country by virtue of having an Irish-born child.
She said the judgement had left 10,000 non-nationals and Irish-born children in legal limbo.
Current Government action, taken as a result of the judgement, "could deny Irish-born children their fundamental Constitutional rights, and may lead to the creation of second-class Irish citizens".
The ICI believed the Government had overreacted to the Supreme Court decision, and that its blanket refusal to "accept, consider, acknowledge or process in any way applications for residency on the basis of a person's parentage to an Irish citizen child" before deportation proceedings had begun was "unnecessary".
She said the judgement was specific to the individual cases concerned.
"Our Constitution entitles every child born in Ireland to be part of the Irish nation. All Irish citizens, regardless of the nationality of their parents, are entitled to be treated equally."
She highlighted a number of family cases which had come to the ICI's attention in which the people were extremely anxious about their futures.
"In the light of everything that has happened, the ICI now asks that the right to apply for residency should be immediately reinstated and clear, transparent and non-discriminatory decisions be made when deciding whether or not to grant individuals residency."
Ms Hilka Becker, a legal consultant with the ICI, said a number of legal aspects of the current situation needed "urgent clarification".
"How does the Government propose to deal with individuals who have been legally resident in Ireland for a number of years and who now wish to transfer their residency status to that of parents of Irish national children?"
She also raised the question of the legal status of the non-national unmarried parents of Irish-born children where the other parent is an Irish citizen.
