Referendum campaign Opponents of the forthcoming referendum proposal on citizenship "need to face up to the reality of citizenship shopping", the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Mr Ahern, has claimed.
"Media reports in recent days have drawn attention to the fact that wealthy people are travelling to Ireland to give birth solely to acquire Irish citizenship for their child. This situation cannot be allowed to continue," he said.
He said that opponents of the proposal, which will be voted on on June 11th, had to ask themselves whether it was "reasonable that women are being advised to travel to Ireland to give birth solely in order to acquire Irish citizenship for their child".
Mr Ahern claimed they should also question whether it was acceptable that a legal loophole could be exploited to bypass immigration controls in other European states. "Why should Ireland be alone in Europe in automatically granting citizenship, irrespective of whether either parent has ever lived here?"
Meanwhile, the Socialist Environmental Alliance's European election candidate in Northern Ireland, the journalist and trade unionist, Mr Eamonn McCann, has said that the referendum should have been held on an all-Ireland basis. "Children born in the North as well as in the South are affected," Mr McCann said.
"The right to citizenship was contained in the Belfast Agreement. The Dublin Government, for racist reasons, wants to change the agreement without reference to the North. I am surprised there hasn't been louder protest from parties which gloried in the all-Ireland nature of the 1998 vote which passed the agreement."