Pre-1986 Gender Bias Remedial (retrospective, operational)

The constitutional foundation of this historical-cohort pathway is Art 9.1.3 of Bunreacht na hEireann: 'No person may be excluded from Irish nationality and citizenship by reason of the sex of such person.' The live operative rule through which the cohort claim is realised today is INCA 1956 s.7(1) (substituted in its entirety by INCA 2001 (No.15 of 2001) s.3(1), in force 2 December 1999): 'A person is an Irish citizen from birth if at the time of his or her birth either parent was an Irish citizen or would if alive have been an Irish citizen.' The gender-neutral 'either parent' formula places maternal and paternal transmission on identical footing. Descent is governed by s.7, NOT s.6 (s.6/s.6A = jus soli; the 2001 recast moved descent to s.7). The historical input giving this route its 'remedial' character is INCA 1986 (No.23 of 1986), long title 'to amend and extend the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1956': its s.2 amended the then-s.7(2) by inserting the FBR registration-date proviso, with follow-up relief in INCA 1994 (No.9 of 1994). The precise retrospective maternal-conferral subsection is.

Two distinct competent authorities operate this route and must NOT be normalised into one (decision-maker split LOCKED). The Foreign Births Register and the s.27 registration machinery — the operative mechanism for the typical foreign-born-ancestor maternal-line claim — are kept by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) / Minister for Foreign Affairs; s.27(5) empowers the Minister for Foreign Affairs to make foreign births regulations, currently the Foreign Births Regulations 2013 (S.I. 47/2013), in operation 1 March 2013. Passport issuance (evidencing the entitlement) is likewise a DFA function. By contrast, naturalisation and revocation are functions of the Minister for Justice (transferred from Foreign Affairs by S.I. 418/2011, administered via Immigration Service Delivery) — but those do not arise on a pure descent/historical-cohort claim. The constitutional supervisor of the sex-non-discrimination guarantee is the superior courts enforcing Art 9.1.3. Critically, there is no Ministerial 'absolute discretion' in s.7 descent: entitlement is a matter of statutory/constitutional right (contrast the s.15/s.16 naturalisation routes, which are discretionary). A refusal of FBR registration is challengeable by judicial review.