O’Callaghan's Fake Citizenship Rules
Jim O'Callaghan wants to sound tough on immigration. So, he is proposing a new citizenship law, which he hopes will propel him into the leadership of Fianna Fáil. It is not just personal ambition. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are in decline – and want to regain popularity by scapegoating.
It is a strategy they have learnt from Donald Trump, Musk and the 'tech bros'. The tactic is to divide working people on racist lines. That way you can keep onto your wealth.
It has been tried here before. In 2004, the Progressive Democrats politician, Michael McDowell, pushed a referendum to restrict citizenship to people who have parents who are already Irish or who have been here legally for three out of the last four years. McDowell had found a problem: 'citizenship tourism'. By that he meant that 'foreign women' were travelling to Ireland to have babies, leading, apparently, to overcrowded maternity wards.
It was a fiction, and no one has heard of the 'problem' since – but that is the way scapegoating works. You stir up fears to hold onto wealth and privilege.
Callaghan proposes that citizenship is only granted to those who have resided here for eight years. McDowell, it should be noted, had demanded three-year residency. Then in 2025, it was increased to five years. Now Callaghan wants to extend it to eight years to sound even tougher.
Yet no such requirement applies to someone who was born in Switzerland. They do not have to show 'reckonable residence' for any period, just 'documentary evidence of your history in Ireland'.
Migrants will also be subject to a language and civics test. They may even be asked to speak 'cúpla focal' to show they understand a bit of Gaeilge.
Yet the hypocrisy is glaring. We have a government that is so contemptuous of the Irish language that they put up Heather Humphries for President, even though she can barely speak the cúpla focal. They want to use the language only as a barrier.
A central element in Callaghan's attack is the claim that migrants 'must not be a burden on the state'. This phrase is used repeatedly in Fianna Fáil and Gaelic circles to describe any social welfare recipient, whether Irish or not. They dish out corporate welfare to their friends in business, but they attack single parents or the unemployed as 'shirkers'.
Callaghan's new rules mean that anyone who becomes sick, redundant, or just old can be ruled out as an Irish citizen.
It is not as if becoming naturalised is an easy process. You need to spend €175 on an application fee and then another €950 to process it. You need to amass a collection of documents and pay translation professionals or solicitors for help. If you have been a student, you cannot count the years spent here as 'reckonable' residence. Interesting, despite all the talk of supporting Ukraine, Callaghan is excluding the time spent here by Ukrainian refugees from his eight-year rule.
Callaghan boasts about a reduction in the number of asylum seekers, but he is coy about how this has occurred. He fails to say that the EU is bribing countries like Libya to detain asylum seekers and then turns a blind eye when they torture or try to extort money from their families.
At the core of Callaghan's argument is that 'citizenship' is a privilege. Yet what privilege is there in being 'homeless' or stuck in a rent hellhole while saying you are Irish?
Behind Callaghan's rhetoric lie two aims. He wants part of the Irish workforce subject to extra-legal pressure so he can exploit them more. Non-Irish passport holders make up 27% of the Irish workforce. Does it not suit the friends of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to keep them under control – afraid to speak out, afraid of not being of 'good character'.
Callaghan also wants to create an impression that being Irish is a privilege. That way we might forget to tackle the parties that have run a profoundly unequal little state for nearly one hundred years.
It is an old ideological trick – impose an identity on the poor so that they look downwards rather than upwards.
