Ireland proposes a sixth ground for revoking naturalisation

Section 19 of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956 lets the Minister revoke a certificate of naturalisation on five grounds. The General Scheme published on 21 September 2026 proposes a sixth: “that it is in the interests of public policy, public order or national security”. The procedure beneath those grounds was inserted in April 2025, and the same Head of the Scheme edits it.

What the sixth ground says, and what it does not touch

Head 10 of the General Scheme of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2026 would insert one paragraph into section 19(1), after the five grounds already there.

Those five are not summarised here, and the reason is worth stating: each carries qualifications that do not survive compression. The fraud ground reaches misrepresentation “whether innocent or fraudulent” and requires the concealed facts to be material. The fidelity ground requires the failure to have been shown “by any overt act”. The residence ground turns on seven continuous years of ordinary residence outside the State — outside the island of Ireland for a certificate granted under section 15A — together with a failure to register annually, and it bites only where that failure is “without reasonable excuse”. It does not apply to a certificate issued to a person “of Irish descent or associations”, and time spent abroad in the public service is outside it. The ground for acquiring another citizenship expressly excludes acquisition by marriage or civil partnership. A reader who wants the grounds should read section 19(1).

Section 19 governs certificates of naturalisation. It does not reach Irish citizenship acquired by birth or descent.

This is a General Scheme: the heads of a bill, not a bill, and not law. Nothing in it carries a commencement date. The Legation Times reported its publication on 22 September.

The note is narrower than the paragraph it explains

The explanatory note says the aim is “an additional distinct ground to provide the Minister with the explicit power to revoke citizenship specifically because someone is a threat to national security”.

The operative paragraph names three things: public policy, public order, national security. The first two appear nowhere in the note, which mentions national security alone. The note does not conceal the width — it says a “broad wording better lends itself to the variety of circumstances (albeit relatively rare) that may arise”.

The procedure the ground would enter

Read on the Law Reform Commission’s administrative consolidation of the 1956 Act, updated to 12 June 2026 and stated to be current as of 17 September 2026, section 19 carries a detailed process.

The Minister must give notice of an intention to revoke and state the reasons. The person has 28 days to make written representations, and the Minister must have regard to them. If the decision is to revoke, the notification must inform the person of a right to ask for an inquiry, and they have 14 days to ask. On such a request the Minister “shall appoint a Committee of Inquiry”: a chair who is a retired judge of the Circuit Court, High Court, Court of Appeal or Supreme Court, and two ordinary members. The Act states the Committee “shall be independent in the performance of its functions”. It may affirm the Minister’s decision or set it aside.

That block, subsections (1A) to (1P), was inserted on 7 April 2025. The consolidation’s amendment notes also record that subsections (2) and (3) of the same section were declared unconstitutional on 10 February 2021 in Damache v The Minister for Justice and Equality, Ireland and the Attorney General. This article has not read that judgment and takes from the note only what the note states: which subsections, and when. The note says nothing about the Court’s reasoning, and nothing about whether the 2025 block was a response to it.

National security appears twice, in two different roles

Subsection (1O) already qualifies the duty to give reasons. Where the Minister or the Committee “considers that specifying the reasons for the decision would be contrary to the interests of national security”, the reasons need not be given in the notice of intention, in the Minister’s decision, or in the notification by which the Committee tells the person it has affirmed a revocation.

The proposed sixth ground and that exception both name national security, and they are not the same test. The ground asks whether revoking is in the interests of public policy, public order or national security. The exception asks whether stating reasons would harm national security. Either can be satisfied without the other, and two of the three alternatives in the proposed ground do not require a security justification at all. What the Scheme does is add a second place in the section where the concept does work. It does not make one test answer the other, and nothing in it says a revocation on the new ground would attract the exception.

The second change in the same Head

Subsection (1P) says the Minister may prescribe the procedures for an inquiry, including when oral hearings may be held, “in consultation with the chairperson of the Committee of Inquiry and having regard to the need to observe fair procedures”.

Head 10 would delete eleven words: “in consultation with the chairperson of the Committee of Inquiry and”. The duty to have regard to fair procedures stays, because the Scheme does not touch it. What goes is the requirement to consult the chair of the body that reviews the Minister’s decision — a body the Act says shall be independent — before setting the rules it works under.

The note gives an administrative reason: the change “establishes an enduring regulatory framework so that new regulations are not required each time this process is utilised”. It does not explain why a lasting set of regulations requires dropping the consultation rather than consulting once.

Where the record stops

The amendment note supports two facts about 2021 — which subsections fell, and on what date — and nothing further. Nothing establishes how the sixth ground would be used, against whom, or how often; it does not exist yet. No commencement date attaches to any of it. And this article has not checked the Oireachtas record, so it says nothing about where the Scheme now stands in the legislative process.