Justice Minister to seek Cabinet approval to reduce wait time for children born

THE MINISTER FOR Justice is set to look for Cabinet approval today to reduce the length of time children born in Ireland whose parents aren’t citizens must wait before gaining citizenship.

Currently, children born in Ireland to parents who are not Irish citizens must live here for at least five years before they can become citizens themselves.

Justice Minister Helen McEntee is seeking Cabinet approval to make it easier for those children to gain citizenship.

Children born here to non-Irish citizens must have lived in Ireland for four of the previous eight years and additionally have one year of continuous residence prior to the date of their application, which puts the total length of the residency requirement at five years.

Under the new proposal, the number of years would be reduced from five years to three.

Children who are currently looking for citizenship would be able to gain the status at an earlier stage.

The amendment would only apply to children of parents who are legal residents in Ireland and would not broaden the categories of children entitled to apply for citizenship.

The proposal has come from discussions between McEntee and Labour senator Ivana Bacik, who put forward a private member’s bill on the naturalisation of children born here in the Seanad.

The Irish Nationality and Citizenship (Naturalisation of Minors Born in Ireland) Bill 2018 was debated in the Seanad in December.

Senator Bacik said that “one of the initial motivations for bringing the Bill forward in 2018 was the case of Eric Xue, the nine-year-old boy from Bray in County Wicklow who, colleagues will recall was born and had lived all his life in Ireland but whose family were then threatened with deportation in 2018″.

“We have seen that the children who have been born in Ireland, have grown up here and have known no other home but here are effectively stateless if they do not have Irish citizenship,” Bacik said.

“They are being threatened with deportation along with their families. We have seen that deportations can and have taken place at the end of lengthy immigration or asylum application processes that could take years to determine, years in which a child is born, raised and educated here.”

During the debate, McEntee said that she wanted to “work with Senator Bacik and others in trying to progress the concerns that have been outlined”.

In 2004, the constitution was amended by referendum to make significant changes to the right to Irish citizenship for people born in Ireland.

The amendment meant that a child born in Ireland would no longer be automatically entitled to citizenship unless they had at least one parent who was an Irish citizen or entitled to be an Irish citizen.