Migration and Citizenship: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-30
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Barry Ward (FG), Dún Laoghaire

This country does not function without foreign workers. If the people who come here to give us the benefit of their expertise, hard work and experience were to leave, we would not have a healthcare sector, hospitality sector or tech sector. Let us put that to bed straight away. We need people to come here, and we are incredibly lucky that we have a coterie of hard-working people who are willing to come and make their lives here by contributing to our communities, society and economy. This is why I think the use of words like "racist" is incredibly unhelpful. If we are to have a civil and reasonable dialogue about the issues in these statements, bandying around words like "racist" is really unhelpful. The reality is that it is not racist to ask that we reconsider our migration policy and change it in a way that reflects reality. We are changing it in a way that we need to change it. That is not a racist policy. That is a reasonable policy evaluation that should happen in any country and we should have a discussion that is not based on name-calling and accusations.
That said, I fundamentally disagree with the proposal to change the basis on which citizenship by naturalisation would come about. In my opinion, we do not need to increase it to eight years. It does not bring us in line with Europe. Thirteen of the 27 EU countries have a requirement of five years or fewer for citizenship. I think only six require eight years, for example. That does not matter, to my mind. When we look at the requirements in different countries, there are all kinds of more complicated criteria involved. For example, if a person has a family history of connection to a country, it might reduce the period of time. If a person has a good knowledge of the language of a country, it might reduce the period of time. I do not see the benefit for Ireland to increasing the period for naturalisation from five to eight years. I also do not think that anybody comes to this country on the basis of how long it takes before they apply for citizenship by naturalisation. I do not know how much difference it will make either way.
I agree with the provisions for a citizenship test. I called for this in the Seanad in May 2024. It is entirely reasonable that people should acquaint themselves with the history and culture of the country. The language also plays an important part. I made reference to other countries in Europe, Hungary and Spain for example, where having a knowledge of the language speeds a person up on the track to citizenship. More often than not, when we talk about language and people coming here we are referring to the English language. However, if a person came here and developed an interest and expertise in Irish, that should put them in a different position when applying for citizenship. I pay tribute to the Minister of State, because he has taken on an invidious task in being the person responsible for migration and he has transformed the way we approach many aspects of migration in a positive way. I disagree with him on this particular policy. We have, however, made huge progress, and that huge progress should be recognised when possible.

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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