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lostcarparkWell, in a few hours it will be polling day in Ireland. Several other European countries have already voted, and yet more will do so on Saturday. Here we actually have three elections: the European parliament; local government; and a referrendum on citizenship.
The last of these was given little publicity in the early part of tha campaign, though in my opinion it is the most important of the three. Thankfully, the media seems to have picked up on it in recent weeks, and hopefully it won't be carried through in the manner early polls seemed to suggest.
Currently, anyone born in Ireland is an Irish citizen, an approach we share with the US and a few other countries. What's unique in Irish law is that the parents of a child born on Irish soil have an automatic right to residency. The courts have ruled that excluding parents would deny Irish citizens their rights to be raised by their parents. The government fears that this will give rise to "citizenship tourism", which will put our hospitals under immense strain.
So the proposal is to change the constitution to olny grant citizenship to children of parents who were legally resident in Ireland for three years. There are several problems with this. First, another part of the constitution says that anyone born on the Island of Ireland will be a member of "the Irish Nation", so this will create a new class people who are members of the nation, but not citizens.
But aside from this I feel the change is completely unnecessary. The fact is that birth rates among "native" Irish people have dropped massively while life expectancy has raised. This is causing a "pension timebomb" where there won't be enough money to fund the pensions of people reaching retirement age. Well, we have a whole new class of people who want to be citizens and pay taxes here. Most have shown themselves to be hardworking and more to do jobs that many natives consider beneath them. Why should we turn them away?
The figures don't support them putting a massive strain on our health services don't bear out, either. Over the last thirty years the number of births per year has fallen from over 70,000 to just over 50,000. We have hospitals and wards closed across the country due to lack of funding. We don't need to exclude the labour force that will keep our Celtic Tiger running, we need to put some of the taxes it generates back into the health service to open some of those wards back up.
One of the government posters claims "Citizenshop Matters". Well, I totally agree with this statement, which is exactly why I plan to vote "no".
So get out and vote, and show the government that citizenship does indeed matter.
The last of these was given little publicity in the early part of tha campaign, though in my opinion it is the most important of the three. Thankfully, the media seems to have picked up on it in recent weeks, and hopefully it won't be carried through in the manner early polls seemed to suggest.
Currently, anyone born in Ireland is an Irish citizen, an approach we share with the US and a few other countries. What's unique in Irish law is that the parents of a child born on Irish soil have an automatic right to residency. The courts have ruled that excluding parents would deny Irish citizens their rights to be raised by their parents. The government fears that this will give rise to "citizenship tourism", which will put our hospitals under immense strain.
So the proposal is to change the constitution to olny grant citizenship to children of parents who were legally resident in Ireland for three years. There are several problems with this. First, another part of the constitution says that anyone born on the Island of Ireland will be a member of "the Irish Nation", so this will create a new class people who are members of the nation, but not citizens.
But aside from this I feel the change is completely unnecessary. The fact is that birth rates among "native" Irish people have dropped massively while life expectancy has raised. This is causing a "pension timebomb" where there won't be enough money to fund the pensions of people reaching retirement age. Well, we have a whole new class of people who want to be citizens and pay taxes here. Most have shown themselves to be hardworking and more to do jobs that many natives consider beneath them. Why should we turn them away?
The figures don't support them putting a massive strain on our health services don't bear out, either. Over the last thirty years the number of births per year has fallen from over 70,000 to just over 50,000. We have hospitals and wards closed across the country due to lack of funding. We don't need to exclude the labour force that will keep our Celtic Tiger running, we need to put some of the taxes it generates back into the health service to open some of those wards back up.
One of the government posters claims "Citizenshop Matters". Well, I totally agree with this statement, which is exactly why I plan to vote "no".
So get out and vote, and show the government that citizenship does indeed matter.
