It appears that, as a nation, we are somewhat of an embarrassment to our former president Mary Robinson because the majority of us voted in favour of the 2004 citizenship referendum, writes Noel Whelan.
This week Robinson was the keynote speaker at a special conference on race and immigration hosted by the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. According to a report on the conference in this newspaper on Wednesday when she was asked about the citizenship vote, Robinson expressed her disappointment at the referendum outcome.
She claimed that it had been "rushed into", that there had been no White Paper and "no consideration" of the proposal and that it had "not been thought through". She went on to suggest that it arose from "a panic about maternity hospitals and a hundred or so women coming to Ireland to have their children . . ."
The citizenship referendum was held on June 11th, 2004, and more than 79 per cent of those voting voted yes. Robinson is entitled to be disappointed at the outcome but to suggest that those who supported the decision had not thought it through is insulting. It implies that the 1.4 million who voted yes were rushed and panicked into an uninformed choice.
The 2004 citizenship referendum happened in a particular legal and demographic context. The 1937 Constitution gave the Oireachtas a general power to legislate for the granting of Irish citizenship. However, in 1999 the constitutional changes passed after the Belfast Agreement had the unintended consequence of restricting the Oireachtas's power to alter citizenship entitlement of any child born on the island of Ireland.
In the following five years Ireland experienced significant immigration. Among those who came were women who, although they had no real connection to Ireland, arranged to travel here solely for the purpose of acquiring an automatic right to Irish citizenship for their soon-to-be-born child.
It was in this context that the then Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrats government felt it necessary to correct the earlier anomaly and return to the Oireachtas the power to legislate for the circumstances in which Irish citizenship would be extended to children born on the island of Ireland to non-national parents.
While the extent to which citizenship was being abused was disputed by both sides of the debate, the fact that potential for abuse existed and that some such abuse was occurring was acknowledged by almost all. In the months before the referendum senior personnel in maternity hospitals expressed public concern for the health of the mothers and babies involved and about the impact on maternity services of the arrival of so many women late in pregnancy.
The possibility of holding the referendum on the same day as the 2004 local and European elections was first muted in April 2004. Almost immediately the Labour Party and others attacked the proposal as a political ploy designed to boost support for the government parties in those elections. There were suggestions that the public would be unable to give the issue sufficient consideration during the pre-election period. Both suggestions were shown to be nonsense, however, when on June 11th the electorate voted overwhelmingly for the citizenship change but in the same visit to polling stations delivered a bloody nose to the government parties in both the local and European elections.
Some 60 per cent turned out to make an informed decision. Far from being rushed or ill-considered the citizenship referendum was one of the most intensely debated proposals to emerge in Irish politics in recent decades. After the result was declared some "No" campaigners, shocked by the scale of support for the referendum, suggested that the size of the "Yes" margin confirmed everything they had always believed about the intolerant attitude of Irish people to immigrants.
The reality behind the "Yes" vote in the referendum was of course much more complex. Like any proposal seeking to control or restrict immigration, support for it did include an anti-immigrant element.
However, it also included a larger cohort of voters who were apprehensive about immigration. Put bluntly, the "Yes" side won the referendum because it won the argument.
Robinson's comments this week are typical of a patronising attitude which many of those who opposed the citizenship referendum displayed at the time and which many of a left of centre disposition continue to adopt in the broader immigration debate. They imply that anyone who favours a restriction or control on immigration is unthinking or ill-informed. In doing so they make it more difficult for us to have an honest debate about immigration in this country.