The forthcoming referendum on citizenship will take rights away from children born here "to an extent that no lawyer can predict with any assurance", one of the country's foremost legal experts will say tomorrow.
It will also be argued that if passed, the proposal to limit automatic right to citizenship for babies born here will damage Ireland's reputation in the developing world.
Prof William Binchy of Trinity College will address a seminar - Citizenship, Identity, Irishness - hosted by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. He will say that some of the most crucial human rights guarantees in the Constitution are expressly stated to apply to "citizens" or "the citizen".
"The judges have not agreed on the question whether non-citizens have as much protection under these provisions," he will say.
"Indeed several decisions have rejected the idea that non-citizens have as much protection for their family rights, even though Articles 41 and 42 of the Constitution are not expressly restricted to citizens."
He will argue that the proposed amendment, to restrict automatic Irish citizenship for all babies born on the island, has been drafted "to exclude a range of children from citizenship not withstanding any other provision in the Constitution, unless otherwise provided by law".
"This would appear to authorise the enactment of legislation which discriminated against children by denying citizenship to children born in Ireland whose foreign parents were citizens of a particular state or were of a religion or ethnic background that might be very unpopular at the time. That is not a direction which our Constitution should countenance," he will say.
While the Government has no plans to introduce such legislation, Prof Binchy will ask why we should put into our Constitution a clause that will guarantee no provision in the Constitution can be invoked to mitigate against the proposed law to restrict legislation.
Mr Ray Dooley, chairman of the Children's Rights Alliance, will ask whether the Government should not be carrying out child impact statements before proposing such a referendum. He will point out that the National Children's Strategy calls on the Government to carry out such reviews before introducing any policies with direct impact on children.
"As an American, I don't know if Irish people are aware just how much of the Irish identity is bound up with a sense of generosity, support and welcome. Ireland is seen as a model, certainly in the English-speaking world.
"It would be terribly ironic if that were undone though some sort of attempt to protect the Irish identity," Mr Dooley will say. The seminar takes place in the Arts Building, TCD, at 7 p.m.
