Ireland is to ask the British government to review the law on citizenship in Northern Ireland
A court in the UK has ruled that people born in Northern Ireland are legally British citizens even if they identify as Irish. Emma DeSouza and her US-born husband Jake DeSouza had applied for residency rights in Northern Ireland under EU freedom of movement rules that allow third country spouses of EU citizens to live with their spouses in an EU member state without going through national immigration.
The Home Office rejected the husband’s application on the grounds that it considered Mrs DeSouza a British citizen, suggesting that she would have to renounce her status as a British citizen before they could deal with the case.
Mrs DeSouza argued that she was Irish, had always carried an Irish passport and had the right to be legally recognised as Irish, even though she lived in a UK jurisdiction. She had argued that she should not have to renounce her British citizenship, contending she never considered herself British and was entitled to identify as Irish under the Belfast (Good Friday) agreement (the “GFA”) which allows anyone born in Northern Ireland to be Irish, British or both. A first-tier immigration and asylum tribunal found in her favour in February, 2018 on the grounds that under the terms of the GFA, the people of Northern Ireland had a unique right to identify in multiple ways.
Justice Lane and Judge Rintoul, the president of the upper tribunal, concluded that by birth Mrs DeSouza was “as a matter of law… at present a British citizen” and further that there was nothing in domestic legislation giving effect to the peace deal. The court’s ruling centres on whether the first-tier immigration and asylum tribunal had earlier made an error of law and not on whether the law delivered the GFA. It was found that international treaties like the GFA were entered into under royal prerogative but such prerogative did not extend to altering domestic law without the intervention of parliament. Mrs DeSouza and others could not therefore derive rights or be denied rights by an international treaty.
The decision of the court prompted a wave of local protests that nationality rights in the GFA were not being recognised in British law and led to Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign affairs minister, saying he would raise the case with the Northern Ireland secretary.
The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Ireland had amended its domestic law after the 1998 peace deal to enshrine the agreed rights. Questions will now be asked as to why UK domestic law was not amended similarly.
