Migration and Citizenship: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-30
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Cathal Crowe (FF), Clare

I am glad to have the opportunity to speak on this debate. There are three essential points I want to make. First, as others have said, we have not yet seen the bones of this legislation but we are hearing what is coming down the line in respect of citizenship criteria. I am generally supportive of it. I think we need to have bookended policy that defines what citizenship is. That is quite standard for most countries. However, accommodation needs to be made for people who have been here long term or people who are married or in long-term relationships here and who are already queuing in the system. There needs to be some honouring of that. They have already bought into the system and applied. They are in a long queue to have their citizenship and naturalisation determined. Some accommodation needs to be made for that.
It has been said there will have to be a proficiency in speaking the English language. There are not many migrants who have become fluent in Irish since they came here but there is a minority of examples. One is Misha Yerhidzé - I have probably made a disaster of pronouncing his name - who was in the Public Gallery 12 months ago. He came down and met people of all parties and none. He is a young boy who is living in Ballyferriter and he has a fabulous blas for the Irish language. He plays the concertina. Irish is our State language and it needs to be in those criteria. It cannot just be proficiency in English. The Irish community demands that that be inserted as a criterion.
Communities like Lisdoonvarna in County Clare bent over backwards when the war in Ukraine began. Their population increased fourfold. I have heard people stand up and speak about what their communities have done. There are none in the country that has taken on as much as Lisdoonvarna and it did so proudly. However, I made the point this morning at the Oireachtas education committee that the local school there went from 70-something pupils to 140-something pupils within the space of a month. This was a massive change for it. The point I made at the committee is that just as this ramped up very quickly, at some stage, please God, there will be peace in Ukraine and their status as beneficiaries of temporary protection will expire. At that point, the Department and the Government need to show the same flexibility to schools and communities like that as they wind back from this escalated scenario, as the communities themselves showed that flexibility in the first instance.

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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