Madam, - In his column of March 13th criticising the Taoiseach's lambasting of "aggressive secularism", Fintan O'Toole notes: "The United Irishmen. . . struggled for a republic in which citizenship, not religion, would be the basis of a person's rights. This indifference is at the core of republican democracy."
That is brilliant summation of the essence of a true citizens' republic. It is odd, therefore, that would-be exponents of such a republic in recent years have borne silent witness to the demise of even the pretence of aspiring to such an ideal, consequent on Supreme Court decision of January 29th, 2003 regarding the rights of citizens born to undocumented immigrants.
In this landmark decision the Supreme Court discovered that ultimately the rights of the citizen are contingent rights - that is, contingent on the interests of the State. (In legal parlance the euphemism employed for this is "in the common good"; in practice its meaning is precisely the same.)
In the absence of any a priori legislation or common-law convention regarding the existence of some level of second-class citizenship, the State was discovered to have the power to deport any of its dependent citizens on the basis of the circumstances of their parents. In setting out the case for its interpretation, one of the court's more intriguing arguments found in effect that the rights of "the family" had priority over those of "the citizen" - this by way of justifying why a dependent citizen must accompany his or her undocumented parents into exile.
This is surely a level of power over the State's citizens that was not only undreamt of by the United Irishmen but that, ironically, provided the focus of opposition not just of the United Irishmen but of all of those who have struggled since by peaceful and other means for a true democratic republic. The particular circumstances of the citizens in question are irrelevant - or at least would have been irrelevant in a secular democracy governed by the rightful "indifference" cited by Mr O'Toole.
The surreal ramifications of this judgment were vividly spelt out by the Chen case some months later. Very briefly to reprise: the European Court found that an undocumented individual who had an Irish-born child-citizen, dependent on that parent, had the right on foot of this citizenship to reside and work anywhere in the EU, in conformity with the normal residency rights of EU citizens - ie, so long as they did not become a burden on the state within which they resided.
Unfortunately, as the EU court could not overrule the Irish court this EU residency right did not apply to Ireland. Farcical perhaps, but also with inevitably devastating consequences for some of the hapless citizens caught in its wake.
The very foundation stone of any democratic republic must be the sacrosanct relationship between state and citizen. As a social contract between essentially equal partners it defines the very essence of what constitutes such a republic. What the 2003 judgment revealed is that this hitherto assumed foundation stone of our Constitution is illusory.
While vigorously championing the separation of Church and State, would-be "secular republicans" have silently acquiesced in an assumption of supremacy and infallibility by the State and its institutions when it/they are perceived to be speaking ex cathedra: in Ireland's case, a simple if rather ironic transfer of near-absolute power from Catholic Church to State.
Mr O'Toole concludes by saying that "a republic might be a good idea". Quite so. But until would be-proponents of secular democracy fully grasp the extent of the decay in our political institutions the prospects for such an outcome diminish by the year. - Yours, etc,
PETER WALSH, Heatherview, Greystones, Co Wicklow.