We shouldn’t apply Supreme Court judgement retrospectively
At the last meeting of WIN we discussed some of the issues surrounding the Citizenship Bill currently before the Dail. We understand that the law will soon change in relation to children born in Ireland of non-Irish parents and a new situation will be created.
However, we are acutely aware of the anxiety, depression and suffering caused to those who applied for residency status in Ireland, as the parents of Irish citizen children, before the Supreme Court judgement of January 2003.
It is reckoned that there are about 11,000 such people in the state. We personally know some of them in the Waterford area. Some of them have received letters asking them to leave the state or to be deported. Some of them have come from highly dangerous situations in their countries of origin and are not being allowed to make their case for asylum.
The people we refer to made perfectly rational and lawful choices at the time to leave the asylum system and apply for residency status. Some of them were actually advised by Irish officials to withdraw their asylum claims because they were told that residency was automatically granted to the parents of Irish-born children. It would be quite wrong in principle to retrospectively apply the post-supreme court approach to those parents who applied for residency before the Supreme Court judgement.
We would make the point that justice requires that the pre-January 2003 applicants for residency should be given residency immediately. This small act of generosity would relieve a great deal of pain and uncertainty.
We would also point out that we know people who gave a great deal to offer to Irish society and to the economy of the country but who are currently forced to be dependent on welfare. These are people with skills in business, the caring professions and in finance, who are at present denied the right to work. This is a tremendous waste of their lives and a missed opportunity in terms of the contributions they could make to our society.
To put this in context, each year over 40,000 work permits are issued to people living outside the state. Ireland has a skills shortage. It would serve our self-interest as well as natural justice to do the decent thing and grant residency status to the parents of Irish born children, who were born prior to the Supreme Court judgement of January 2003.
Ann Hayes
93, Clonard Park
Ballybeg
Waterford
