Sir, – Prof Ronan McCrea's call for a notion of Irish citizenship that is less blood-based than our current model ("We need a new definition of what it means to be Irish", Opinion & Analysis, August 7th) echoes Arthur Griffith's definition in respect to blood. Griffith, the "father of Sinn Féin" and founding father of the Irish state in 1921/22, was editor of the United Irishman newspaper. In that paper in 1901, a sometimes acrimonious debate on whether "there is no Irishman but the Gael" (or "the Irish are now a composite race") ended when Griffith declared against those who thought that blood or background rather than values or objectives should be the qualification for citizenship in a future Irish state.
Griffith wrote that, “the very same test which is the hall-mark of the American citizen ought to be the test of the Irishman, that he accept the doctrine of an Irish nation, Irish in its language, Irish in its policy, Irish in every outlook of its national life; and that to forswear all allegiance to every other nation in the world. Be he Gael or Cromwellian, French-Huguenot or Spanish-Irish, the man who swears to an Irish Nation and he only is an Irishman”. To that list Griffith in 1915 added Jews, of which there had been a significant migration into Ireland from eastern Europe.
Griffith himself spoke Irish only moderately, and saw its restoration as aspirational rather than imminent. However, the relationship of language to citizenship is still debated today, with language tests for immigrants in some states controversial. Meanwhile, the US has ostensibly become less welcoming to migrants than in 1901.
Both Griffith and Prof McCrea leave open the question of how one determines if an applicant for citizenship (or indeed an existing citizen) may be proven to “accept the doctrine of an Irish nation” (Griffith’s phrase) or “has a sufficient element of better or worse commitment” (Prof McCrea), where the doctrine or values to which they must commit is a moving target. – Yours, etc,
COLUM KENNY,
Professor Emeritus,
Dublin City University,
Dublin 9.