The Minister for Justice has published legislation which will deny citizenship to children born in Ireland to non-national parents.
The legislation follows the referendum in June, in which 80 per cent of the electorate voted to change the Constitutional provisions on the issue.
Mr McDowell said today the change was a "fair and equitable set of arrangements for entitlement to Irish citizenship".
"This Bill represents another step towards the putting in place of a progressive legislative basis for all the State's dealings with non-nationals," he added in a statement this morning.
When the Belfast Agreement was approved in a 1998 referendum, it gave every child born on the island of Ireland the right to Irish citizenship.
But under the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Bill 2004 published today, a non-national child will only be given citizenship if one of the parents has been lawfully resident in the country for three years out of the four years before the birth. Asylum seekers and students from countries outside the European Economic Area cannot use their time spent in the country to claim citizenship rights for their children.