Greens and Sinn Fein: If the Government hoped to benefit its parties electorally through the citizenship referendum, it would do so only "at the expense of civil rights, community relations and the Good Friday agreement," Sinn Féin claimed.
The party's leader in the Dáil, Mr Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, appealed to the Government "not to seek to make this profound change in the Constitution and in the Good Friday agreement for which the people voted by an overwhelming majority in 1998".
Sinn Féin, which backed the joint Fine Gael, Labour and Green Party amendment to refer the issue to the all-party Committee on the Constitution, said that if the Government did not "relent", the party would campaign vigorously for a No vote.
Mr Ó Caoláin said there had been "no prior consultation with the political parties, North or South, no engagement with civil society, no research, no evidence, no White Paper, no Green Paper and no real debate".
The two governments were "unpicking and undermining the Good Friday agreement".
Green Party leader Mr Trevor Sargent said that if there was a wider debate, "all bets would be off and the Minister might get the consensus he sought". His party and the majority of Irish citizens "support a managed, fair, transparent and rights-based immigration regime".
He said that if the Government was sincere about conducting a reasoned debate it should condemn "the election candidate in the Dublin area who has already issued a leaflet containing a deliberate misrepresentation of the Opposition parties' position, which is calculated to inflame and promote xenophobia". The Government was proposing to "interfere with Irish citizenship laws which have existed since the foundation of the State."
Mr Joe Higgins (Socialist, Dublin West) said the referendum completed the Government's electoral "hat trick" - along with rural housing and decentralisation - and these "were the issues for rural areas and immigration is the issue in urban areas which the Government believes will save the skins of its desperate candidates".
