PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE Dana Rosemary Scallon has defended her US citizenship and insisted there is no conflict between this and her Irish citizenship.
Ms Scallon confirmed she had pledged the oath that requires naturalised US citizens to renounce their allegiance to all other states. Before doing so, she told an official she could not give up her Irish citizenship and he had said this was not a problem because there was a “unique relationship” between the countries.
“I was absolutely assured that the oath had no effect on my allegiance to this country,” she told RTÉ yesterday.
She said she took out US citizenship in 1999, after she had stood in the 1997 presidential election and not before that election, as stated by her sister, Susan Stein, during a court case in Iowa.
On entering office, the president is required to declare that he or she will “maintain the Constitution of Ireland and uphold its law”.
The US oath of allegiance sworn by Ms Scallon requires her to “absolutely and entirely renounce” allegiance to any foreign state, to defend the constitution and laws of the USA and to bear arms on behalf of the USA when required.
Speaking to The Irish Timesin Cork yesterday, Labour's candidate Michael D Higgins said it was important that Ms Scallon's successful application for US citizenship was in the public realm.
He said “there would seem to be on the face it a contradiction” between swearing an oath to serve the Irish people if elected the president of Ireland and an affirmation to any other political entity or state.
Mr Higgins said pledging an oath of allegiance to their country is important to Americans. “American citizens take it quite seriously and it’s quite ceremonial – you don’t do it casually,” he said.
The mere fact that Ms Scallon had sworn an oath of allegiance in the US was “not a problem” for her Irish citizenship, said a Department of Justice spokesman. Thousands of people in her position hold dual citizenship, he pointed out. Constitutional lawyers said the swearing of an oath of allegiance in the US would have no effect on her Irish citizenship.
“It’s embarrassing certainly, but only that,” said one lawyer.
Dana’s US citizenship became public during a bitter legal dispute with family members over the ownership of some of her religious recordings. Speaking in Tralee yesterday, Ms Scallon said that every family had disputes and it was “stooping to a new low” to raise a personal family matter. “At the bottom of it all I love my family and we have reached agreement,” she said