Citizenship referendum will target innocent children if passed, warn lawyers

THE Government’s citizenship referendum is being carried out with undue haste and will create Constitutional ambiguities over the rights of children, a petition signed by 150 lawyers claimed yesterday.

Launching a Lawyers Against the Amendment campaign in Dublin yesterday, Trinity College Dublin Regius Professor of Law William Binchy said the referendum, if passed, would target innocent children by denying them citizenship and reducing their constitutional protection.

“It would introduce a new discrimination between children born in Ireland, which has not been part of our legal system at any time since Ireland achieved its independence,” he said.