Sir, – Contrary to John Kenny's claims (August 23rd), the citizenship referendum did not "ease racist resentment". The National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism noted a dramatic increase in racist incidents in the period following the referendum. And, as The Irish Times has reported, racist incidents are currently on the rise ("Racist incidents double in year, says immigrant council", August 23rd).
The referendum did not merely close a “loophole that had put Irish maternity hospitals under severe pressure”. It represented a fundamental change in the nature of Irish citizenship, removing the identification of citizenship at birth with the territory of the island of Ireland and making it an exclusive matter of descent from a nation understood as an ethnicity. Furthermore, it was not a referendum requested by the masters of the maternity hospitals and the “severe pressure” portrayed by the government of the time was concocted by statistical sleight of hand.
The government consistently elided all births to non-Irish citizen mothers (alleged to be one in five) with mothers presenting in the last stages of pregnancy (a few hundred at most). Mr Kenny is correct that nearly 80 per cent of voters voted Yes, but such a large majority does not give him the right to rewrite history. – Yours, etc,
Dr GRAHAM FINLAY,
School of Politics &
International Relations,
University College Dublin,
Belfield,
Dublin 4.