The President should refer the proposed amendments to the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Bill to the Supreme Court, according to a senior counsel and former refugee appeals authority.
Mr Peter Finlay SC was addressing the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality and Women's Rights yesterday on the amendments, which would reduce the time available for asylum-seekers to seek a judicial review of decisions from up to six months to two weeks.
"This legislation ought not to be signed by her," said Mr Finlay. "You should ask the President to seek the advice of the Council of State on this." This is the normal procedure before a President asks the Supreme Court to review proposed legislation.
He told the committee that since 1981 it was an established principle of Irish jurisprudence that non-Irish citizens could enjoy the protection of the Irish Constitution.
It would defeat the purpose of various pronouncements of the courts about equal treatment of non-Irish citizens if access to the courts were reduced for some categories and not for others.
He cited a judgment from Mr Justice Barrington which said that the concepts of citizen, person, man and human could not be separated. "This legislation separates a person on the basis of his or her ethnicity."
He said the law was also inoperable, because it was asking a person to have substantial grounds for a judicial review within 14 days, not just to seek leave for judicial review within that time.
Mr Donncha O'Connell, director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, said the President should refer the legislation to the Supreme Court for assessment. "I would wager a bet with the Minister, if he was a betting man, that the courts are likely to strike it down," he said.
Speaking on behalf of Amnesty International, Dr Colin Harvey said the legislation risked running counter to existing international human rights law, in particular the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Council resolution on minimum guarantees for asylum procedures.