Philip Dwyer

🚨📝PETITION: EXTEND RESIDENCY REQUIREMENTS FOR IRISH CITIZENSHIP TO 30 YEARS Myself and my friend Maurice drew up this petition to increase the residency requirement to 30 YEARS for foreign nationals who wish to become Irish citizens. Please SIGN and SHARE, it only takes 2 MINS! Thank you. Albert. “We therefore call on the Government, the Minister for Justice, and the Oireachtas to go further than an 8-year residence rule and to legislate a citizenship settlement worthy of the 2004 decision: 1.  Residence. Naturalisation shall not be available until 30 years of continuous, lawful, reckonable residence. Time on student permission, international protection pending, or temporary protection shall not count. 2.  Automatic citizenship. A child shall acquire Irish citizenship automatically only where a parent has held Irish citizenship for more than 10 years at the time of the birth. Birth in Ireland, of itself, shall not confer citizenship. 3.  No claim on the social State while seeking membership of the nation. Until citizenship is granted, applicants and their dependants shall have no access to social welfare, including child benefit; no free public healthcare; no family reunification; no fuel allowance; no subsidies of any kind; no social housing, affordable housing or Help to Buy. Citizenship must not be a route to the welfare system. 4.  Character. Applicants must have no criminal record. 5.  Language. Applicants must demonstrate university-level fluency in Irish and in English. 6. Knowledge and contribution. Applicants must pass a once-off, rigorous citizenship examination covering Irish history, geography, values, culture, institutions and both languages. Each sitting of the examination, including every resit, shall cost €50,000, adjusted to inflation. 7.  Honesty. If an applicant is found to have lied in the citizenship process, citizenship shall be stripped and the person deported to the country of origin. 8.  Crime after the grant. If a naturalised citizen commits a serious crime within 20 years of the grant, citizenship shall be revoked and the person deported to the country of origin. 9. Public office. No person who acquires Irish citizenship by naturalisation shall hold public office until 20 years have passed from the date citizenship was granted. Living here, paying tax or holding a passport shall not shorten that period. Public office means membership of Dáil Éireann or Seanad Éireann, the office of President, judicial office, and any other public office prescribed by law. Citizenship is membership of the nation. High office is a further trust, and it should not be available to a newly naturalised citizen. Ireland is not being asked to invent a 30-year standard. The United Arab Emirates already applies one. Under Federal Law No. 17 of 1972, a person who is not in a shorter, tightly defined category may be considered for naturalisation only after at least 30 years of continuous, lawful residence, together with Arabic proficiency, a lawful income, good character and no conviction for an offence of moral turpitude or dishonesty. Even then, citizenship is a discretion of the State, not a right that follows from tax or time served. A country of fewer than six million people, with a far larger foreign-born workforce than Ireland’s, has chosen to keep the passport rare. A 5-year or 8-year Irish pathway treats membership of the nation as a short administrative wait. If the UAE can require three decades of settled, lawful residence before it will even consider naturalisation, Ireland can require no less. Legal work and tax are conditions of living here. They are not a title to the Irish nation. Immigration pressure, housing scarcity and the welfare budget are not separate from citizenship policy; they are why the pathway must be narrow, long and demanding.” #EarnThePassport Link to the petition: (change.org/p/irish-citizensh…)