My party has a proud history of creating social change in this country. We are probably unlike any other party in the degree of change we have stimulated. I refer to our attitudes to divorce, abortion, the rights of the LGBTQ community, women's issues and many other areas. As a party, we are now pursuing a campaign to ensure that every child born in this country has a pathway towards citizenship. We will not stop until it is achieved. The 27th amendment to the Constitution was introduced by Fianna Fáil with the support of Fine Gael in opposition and passed in 2004. It needs to be withdrawn or we must bring in legislation to neutralise it to allow a pathway to citizenship for children whose parents were born outside the State. It is completely wrong that such children cannot get passports, have problems accessing higher education or in some cases are threatened with deportation. It is wrong that children are treated differently from those they sit next to in school and are in some ways discriminated against.

The majority of Members of this House are delighted that change is coming in the United States. US President-elect Joe Biden has said that he wants to support the children of illegal immigrants. They call them "dreamers" in the United States. We have our own dreamers here. There are children in our own country that we need to look after. I am asking for the Tánaiste's support in this. We have 3,000 undocumented children in Ireland. These are our dreamers. We are going through a pandemic. So many of our healthcare workers come from outside this State. I have met some whose children were born in this State but do not have the same rights as the children they sit beside in crèches, primary schools, secondary schools or in some cases third level institutions. The pandemic has created disruption and changed the way we think. It has given us a chance to breathe and think about what is important to us. The children of all of those workers deserve to be treated equally. We all know about the case of Eric Zhi Ying Mei Xue, whose deportation order was opposed by a petition signed by 65,000 people and was then reversed. There are many children like Eric. It is not good enough that if someone has a Minister in his or her constituency he or she can get a deportation order changed for a child while many others face similar orders.

My colleague, Senator Ivana Bacik, has introduced legislation to deal with this issue in the Seanad. Will the Tánaiste support this in order to ensure that these children have a pathway? This is a campaign that the Labour Party has initiated. It is being led by our youth wing, Labour Youth. Will the Tánaiste support this campaign and ensure that our 3,000 dreamers get their rightful place in this country, are respected and are given a pathway to citizenship?

I thank the Deputy. I support the thrust of the campaign and the intentions behind it. The matter of how this can be achieved requires a bit more discussion. There is always the law of unintended consequences. We all know of children, young people and teenagers who were born in Ireland, who know no other home and who speak with Dublin, Wicklow or Kerry accents - not that someone's accent really matters. Many were born here, some were brought here at a very young age. To me it would be wrong to deport them to countries they never called home and expect them to start their lives there. We need a change in this area to provide a better legal mechanism for "dreamers", as the Deputy describes them, young people born in Ireland who are not citizens but who know no other home and were schooled here. They need a pathway to regularisation and then to citizenship, which is a slightly different thing.

Reversing the 27th amendment is a different issue. Unusually for a European country, our previous regime allowed anyone born in the State to be an Irish citizen automatically. Unfortunately that can be open to abuse. It could confer rights on a parent who arrived here illegally, which would not be the right thing to do. It could also represent a pull factor, causing people to come here from England to avail of that right. That is what happens in America, as the Deputy knows. We want to avoid replicating that. These are complicated issues, but the principle of providing a pathway to residency and citizenship for children who have only known Ireland as home is a desirable one. We will be happy to work with the Labour Party on that.

I thank the Tánaiste. This is a very important issue for us. Last December we lost the chairperson of our youth wing, Mr. Cormac Ó Braonáin. He was an amazing young man whose many talents had a huge impact on all of us in the Labour Party and further afield. His number one political objective was to ensure that children born to people not from this State or without citizenship would have this pathway. We all know the way our country has dealt with direct provision. We all know that there are children in direct provision whose home is Ireland. We all know that the longer this goes on, the more cases we will have.

Given our experience with Covid-19 and the time we have been given to breathe and to analyse, now is the time to deal with this issue. In light of the Tánaiste's very welcome comments about working with the Labour Party, I ask him to look at the legislation we have introduced to the Seanad and support it. Senator Ivana Bacik is very well versed in this area. We would really welcome that so that we could bring it forward to the Dáil. I am sure my colleagues in the Dáil would support it too.

I cannot say whether we can support it at this time, but I will take a look at it. I will speak to the Minister for Justice, Deputy Helen McEntee, who I expect to be the Minister addressing it in the Seanad, to see what we can do. Perhaps we will not oppose it and attempt to find a solution on Committee Stage. Senator Bacik is one of the best legislators in these Houses so we would always take a serious look at any legislation she puts forward, or at any legislation put forward by any Member. We have found solutions to these issues in the past. Only last year we brought in a scheme to regularise people who came here on a student visa, whose student visa lapsed and who ended up in the workforce. Many have been here for years. This is pretty much what happens to the undocumented Irish in America, who often arrive with a student visa and overstay. We found a solution to that. We never use the term "amnesty" because we have signed a European agreement not to implement amnesties, but we arrived at a system allowing such people to apply for a regularised status. Perhaps we can come up with a scheme to facilitate these young people as well. As I say, I agree with the point the Deputy is making. I would not like to see too many more cases like this arise without a solution in place.