Irish Times

Thur., June 17, 2004

Page 7

Figures do not identify status of non-national mothers

The breakdown of the number of non-nationals giving birth in Dublin's maternity hospitals does not bring the now-redundant debate on "citizenship tourism" much further forward.

This is mainly because the figures do not give the country of residency of the mother, only the nationality.

We do not know, therefore, how many came in the late stages of pregnancy in order to acquire citizenship other than what we can extrapolate from their countries of origin and the reasons these nationals are normally in Ireland. These suggest that the proportion is small.

Predictably, the figures do show that the countries supplying the highest numbers of asylum-seekers also provide the highest number of births to non-nationals.

Across all the maternity hospitals in Dublin about one in four births is to a non-national. But these include citizens of the EU, including the UK, the US and Australia, as well as citizens of countries generating asylum-seekers. There is no information about how many of them are married to Irish citizens.

In 2002 1,801 of the births were to women from EU member-states, including the UK, and in 2003 this figure was 1,840. This means that more than one in three births to non-nationals were to women who had an unrestricted right to live and work in Ireland.

There is no way of knowing the status of the remainder. Citizens of the US, China, the Philippines, South Africa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, or many other countries now living in Ireland could include students, workers, dependant spouses or, for most of the countries, asylum-seekers or refugees.

There were 47,500 work permits issued last year, of whom only a proportion would have the right to have their family, if they have one, with them. Since 1992 6,363 people have been granted asylum, with 3,375 asylum applicants awaiting a decision. It is unlikely that more than half the remaining births were to refugees or asylum-seekers.

The largest group of non-nationals giving birth in Ireland is Nigerian. They accounted for 1,237 births in 2002 and 1,528 in 2003, out of a total number of non-national births of 5,322 and 5,625 respectively. This means they accounted for about one in four non-national births in 2002, and about two out of every seven in 2003.

The other group significantly represented in the figures is Romanian, with 496 Romanian mothers giving birth in Dublin in 2002, and 470 in 2003. This means that they accounted for about 10 per cent and 9 per cent of all non-national births in those years.

This corresponds to their presence among asylum-seekers. In 2003, 39.4 per cent of all asylum-seekers were Nigerian, and 9.8 per cent were Romanian, making up about half the total between them. However, the total number of non-national births includes those who are not, and never were, in the asylum process, so we cannot make a direct comparison.

Outside of these two groups, other African and east European mothers are relatively few. There were under 100 in each year from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a strife-torn country from which many people fled, for example. There were 122 from Lithuania in 2002 and 73 in 2003. In 2002, 116 Moldovan mothers gave birth, and in 2003 this figure was 90.

A similar number of French women gave birth in Ireland in those years. Unsurprisingly, given their increased presence in Ireland, mothers from China and the Philippines are significantly represented: 190 Chinese babies were born in Dublin in 2002, and 241 in 2003. The respective figures for the Philippines were 116 and 236. Chinese people come here to study and work, while Filipinos come mainly to work in the health service and the caring professions.

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