Madam, - This referendum proposal will be possibly the most simple and straightforward issue ever to have been put to the country.
It is not anti-immigrant, nor is it racist. It merely seeks to close a loophole whereby the children of immigrants, born here, can automatically acquire Irish citizenship, solely as a result of a change in the Constitution made at the time of the Good Friday Agreement in order to extend automatic citizenship to the people of Northern Ireland.
Yet the Opposition parties, while, on the one hand admitting that this loophole must be plugged, seem determined to present the change as a complex constitutional issue. The volume of hot air expended by them has succeeded in transforming the issue into a political football which they, rather than the Government, hope to use during the forthcoming June elections.
Surely this is the kind of opposition for opposition's sake, by those who put the interests of their party above those of the country, which not only makes rational debate and consensus on national issues impossible but destroys the electorate's faith in the political system. - Yours, etc.,
GEOFFREY ROBINSON,
Cullenswood,
Dublin 6.