In the High Court, the State has argued that when non-national parents are being deported, the constitutional rights of their Irish born children are best met through the children leaving with their families. Then, when the children are capable of independent living, they could live here if they choose.
Counsel for the State, Patrick McCarthy, was making his submissions in the legal challenge by a Czech family and a Nigerian man with Irish born children. They are seeking to overturn orders for their deportations.
Mr McCarthy said the rights of Irish-born children could not be advanced in order to enable their parents to remain here. In these cases, the applicants were here less than a year and the State was entitled to take that into account.
He also said the courts had decided in several cases that the State was entitled to control entry and exit to the country. The number of non-nationals seeking to remain here had risen to almost 11,000 in 2000 and maintaining the integrity of the asylum system was a legitimate aspect of public policy.
Concluding his submissions for the applicants, Bill Shipsy had argued that whether their non-national parents had been here for a short or long period was irrelevant to the constitutional entitlements of Irish-born children. The rights of Irish citizens arose from the moment of their birth, and these children had rights of their own and rights within their families, he said.
Gerard Hogan, also for the applicants, said the problem with the State's approach to the present cases was that it was looking at the situation through the eyes of the non-national parents. It was justifying the deportation orders on the basis of a wonderful bureaucratic euphemism: the need to maintain the integrity of the asylum system. But he said that euphemism could not be invoked to trample on the rights of an Irish-born child.
