Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland

Twenty-seventh Amendment
Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland referendum
Date	11 June 2004
Results Votes  % Yes 1,427,520 7001791700000000000♠79.17% No 375,695 7001208309999999999♠20.83% Valid votes 1,803,215 7001988900000000000♠98.89% Invalid or blank votes 20,219 7000111000000000000♠1.11% Total votes 1,823,434 100.00% Registered voters/turnout 3,041,688 7001599500000000000♠59.95%

The Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland provided that children born on the island of Ireland to parents who were both foreign nationals would no longer have a constitutional right to citizenship of the Republic of Ireland. It was effected by the Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Act, 2004, which was approved by referendum on 11 June 2004 and signed into law on 24 June of the same year. It partially reversed changes made to the Constitution by the Nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland which was passed as part of the Good Friday Agreement.

Prior to 1999 the right to citizenship by reason of birth in Ireland existed in ordinary legislation. The only people who had a constitutional right to citizenship were those who were citizens of the Irish Free State when the constitution came into force. For those born after 1937 the Constitution stated that the "future acquisition and loss of Irish nationality and citizenship shall be determined in accordance with law". This changed in 1999 when as part of the Nineteenth Amendment the following clause was inserted into Article 2 of the Constitution:

This provision was intended to ensure that people from Northern Ireland would not be deprived of Irish citizenship, but also created a constitutional right to citizenship by birth. If illegal immigration was not an issue in the referendum campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment it become the subject of much controversy in the following years with allegations that foreign nationals were engaging in "birth tourism" by presenting themselves at hospitals in the Republic or in Northern Ireland in the late stages of pregnancy to secure citizenship for their children. Although the true number of births attributable to birth tourism was greatly disputed during the referendum campaign, one prominent instance was that of Man Chen who travelled to Northern Ireland in 2000 so that her child would be an Irish citizen. Chen's argument that she had the right to remain in the United Kingdom with her EU national child was before the European Court of Justice at the time of the referendum campaign.

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