Migration and Citizenship: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-30
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Conor Sheehan (LAB), Limerick City

What the Minister is proposing in relation to these citizenship changes is nothing more than performative cruelty. There is no evidence for this because if the evidence existed, then the Minister would publish it. He has not done so and he will not do so. The people we are talking about are, in the main, highly skilled. Many of them are doctors, other healthcare workers, engineers and so on and the Government is going to leave many of them in a grey area, in immigration uncertainty, for longer than they need to be. That is not acceptable and, in my opinion, it is shameful. I suspect that these changes might have more to do with the Minister for justice's protracted Fianna Fáil shadow-leadership election than they do with actually dealing with immigration and migration properly.
The Government is destroying another pathway to social integration instead of supporting it. I have been contacted by so many people in my constituency, including doctors, software engineers and tech workers, who told me they are really worried. Many of them are quite far along the pathway under the existing rules. At the bare minimum, they need a transitional arrangement. This is a cruel thing to do to people. Also cruel is the way the Minister just said this is changing, like it or lump it, while the Taoiseach is saying, "Sure we might do something at some stage". We need clarity from the Government on this issue. It is not just a simple technical change. It affects people who live, work and have built their lives here, who are here legally and lawfully and who contribute so much to our economy and society. They should not be held in immigration uncertainty for a longer period.
To speak in language the Government might actually listen to, this is something that could damage our economy and our competitiveness. It is very depressing, when the Overton window in this country has moved so much in terms of immigration and migration, to see the Government, in effect, chasing something it will not catch and trying to satiate people it will not be able to satiate. Many of those the changes will affect people who came here as critical skills workers through the stamp 4 process. They have spent their lives here. If they were to up sticks and leave, our health service could potentially collapse. Citizenship should not depend on income, because the income threshold will disproportionately affect people in lower paid but valuable employment - such as care workers; people whose jobs we could not fill if they did not do them - and also people with disabilities.
Extending the pathway should not involve an arbitrary cliff-edge deadline. At the bare minimum, we need a transitional arrangement. I ask the Government to put in place a transitional provision to protect people who are here lawfully, including people on stamp 4 permits or employment permits. The goalposts should not be moved on them midway through the process. It is not fair. They should be assessed according to the rules under which they came to Ireland. This is about fairness and ensuring people who came here and followed the rules as they were laid out when they came are not simply told, when they are some bit of the way along, that the requirement is going up to eight or ten years. That is not fair.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-30