Former president Mary Robinson has criticised the handling of the 2004 citizenship referendum, which ended the automatic right to citizenship of those born in Ireland, describing it as a "fundamental change" that was "not properly thought through".
Speaking at a conference on race and immigration hosted by the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, Mrs Robinson said: "I was very saddened and disappointed at that referendum. I thought it was rushed into, not properly thought through. There was no White Paper, there was no consideration.
"There was a panic about maternity hospitals and a hundred or so pregnant women coming to Ireland to have their children. Is that so bad?"
Mrs Robinson had been asked by Dr Ronit Lentin of Trinity College Dublin whether her promotion, as president, of the place of the worldwide diaspora as part of the "national family" had the unintended result of legitimising a concept of Irishness based mainly on blood.
Addressing the broad effects of immigration, "one of the deepest and most fascinating challenges facing Ireland today", Mrs Robinson commended measures taken to counter racism and intolerance but expressed concern at the situation in Balbriggan in Dublin, where pressure on school places led recently to the opening of a school with exclusively minority ethnic children.
The former president also cited the latest report on Ireland from the European Commission on Racism and Intolerance, which pointed out that some recommendations made previously had not been implemented.
Among these, the report suggested there was a need for policies aimed at integrating asylum seekers and refugees into Irish society; that an increase in demand for non-denominational and multi-faith schools must be met; and that criminal laws must be changed to include stronger anti-racism provisions.
Immigration had raised questions that she could not have foreseen as president, Mrs Robinson said.
When she spoke of embracing the Irish diaspora, she believed that this "larger sense of an Irish family spread across the world would give us a broader, more inclusive sense of our own identity" at an important point in the peace process.
"I hadn't foreseen or understood at that time how another opening up of Irish society, in the dramatic increase in migrants coming into Ireland and the slowing of emigration out of Ireland would pose new and complex challenges to Irish identity."
However, Mrs Robinson, who is currently professor of practice in international affairs at Columbia University, argued that immigration would not threaten Irishness but would enhance it.
"I know that there are people who are questioning, 'are we going to lose our essential values?'. It doesn't make us less Irish. It makes us more excitingly vibrant in being the people who used to go and now receive other people, and who have this sense of an Irish destiny."
On the question of integration, she warned that Travellers must not be left behind by policies aimed at recent migrants.
"We have to know that there is a very big indigenous issue of the way in which we treat the Travelling community.
"A focus on migrants that doesn't also encompass the Travelling community can diminish focus on [their] need to be more fully addressed in a way that is supportive of their core identity, and not trying to integrate them in a way that undermines their sense of their identity . . .
"The Travelling community have their place and space in the Irish mind and it's not an entirely friendly space and place."
