Citizenship law change to tighten rules

Changes to Ireland’s citizenship laws were expected to be ratified today in a referendum to tighten the State’s immigration regulations.

The electorate went to the polls on Friday to decide whether to remove the right for parents of Irish-born children to claim citizenship if they had lived in the country for less than three years.

Opinion polls in the run up to the vote showed a clear majority in favour of the proposed constitutional change.

The referendum followed a European Court ruling last month that parents of children born on the island of Ireland could claim citizenship.

The European Court of Justice found Man Levette Chen’s daughter Catherine, who was born in Belfast in 2000, had the right to reside in the UK on the basis of being an Irish, and hence EU, citizen.

It also decided that Catherine’s mother, a Chinese national who would otherwise not be entitled to reside in the UK, may invoke a right of residence derived from that of her daughter.

Nationalist parties in Northern Ireland had claimed it would undermine the Good Friday Agreement which guarantees the right of people in north to qualify as Irish citizens.

Sinn Féin and the SDLP said Justice Minister Michael McDowell had given unionists in Northern Ireland ammunition to argue the Good Friday Agreement could be radically altered.

The Government had said the constitutional switch would close a loophole in the country’s citizenship laws bringing Ireland into line with the rest of the EU.