Migration and Citizenship: Statements Dail Éireann — 2026-09-30 ============================================================ Martin Daly (FF), Roscommon-Galway I thank the Minister of State for the opportunity to speak here today. I am the son of an immigrant. My mother was Indian. She came here in 1954 to study medicine in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. She loved this country. She did not hold citizenship for almost 40 years after having seven children and working in a rural practice. She took out an Irish passport in her later years because it facilitated travel to and from Europe. The point I am making is that you can have residency here, and we should not conflate that and scare people who are long-term residents here and have not applied for citizenship heretofore. While we look at reform of our citizenship requirements, we should make that clear to people. It is important that we have a review of the citizenship requirements. I am quite happy with the idea that there are certain civic requirements such as language tests, a history of contribution to the economy and other such tests. I do not have a problem with that. The extension of five to eight years can be debated but I have had no representations of real fear around that. Where there is concern is the fact the application for citizenship takes so long at the moment. I have been dealing with a medical consultant and his wife, who is a nurse. They have been here for a number of years. They have two children in India being brought up by frail, elderly grandparents and they are finding it very difficult to effect family unification. IWe need to have more flexibility around individual cases where people have demonstrated their commitment to this country. Let us not forget that migration to this country has been a good thing, in spite of the efforts by organised right-wing groups to conflate illegal and legal immigration. The vast majority of migration here involves people we have invited into this country and who have added to our economy in all sorts of spheres, such as healthcare, the hospitality industry, construction, pharmaceuticals and information technology, IT. They have added to this economy, and they need to feel that their work and their presence here are valued. Unfortunately, we have had a rise in racism. Fourteen or 15 months ago, we had a spate of attacks against Indian nationals around this country. I visited the then Indian ambassador, Mr. Akhilesh Mishra, and expressed my sadness at those attacks where people were being targeted because of the colour of their skin. It was driven by social media and people like Elon Musk and his hundreds of millions of followers. There is a crucial point about people whose application for citizenship is already in the system, such as that couple I referred to who have been in the system for two years. Another doctor who has approached me has been here for 15 years. His wife is a teacher and now works as a special needs assistant, SNA. She has applied for citizenship. She has been in the system for two years and they are fearful that they will be set back. We really need flexibility and fairness for the group of people who already have their application in process. It is important that while the Government has pursued a focus on immigration, part of the reasoning for that has been, in my estimation, that we must have a fair, firm system the public believes in. There is a narrative against our immigration system that suggests we have an open-door policy and that creates problems, so we have to have a system the public has full confidence in to avoid creating political vacuums where fascists and right-wing agitators can prosper. I agree with the tightening of our immigration rules on that basis. We have to demonstrate to the public that the system is fair and equitable. On the issue of migrants generally, the State is not recognising adequately their contribution to the State and to our economy and we must have a much more forceful narrative coming from the State, Government and public representatives on the value of migration to our country. Our birth rate is falling. Our elderly demographic is growing larger. There will be one million people over 65 by 2030 and 1.6 million by 2045. We need migration to keep this country and this economy stable. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. 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