From one of Ireland's leading journalists, Fintan O'Toole, in The Irish Times yesterday:
In a move that makes Mills & Boon look believable, Brian Lenihan last week published legislation that will give him the right to decide whether some couples will be allowed to marry. You couldn't make it up but you don't have to. There, in black print on white paper, is one of the most extraordinary provisions ever included in Irish legislation.
The Immigration Bill will, if passed, lay down that "A marriage purportedly contracted in the State between two persons one or each of whom is a foreign national is invalid in law" unless the Minister for Justice is notified three months in advance. The Minister can refuse permission outright on a number of grounds, including the vague catch-all that the marriage "would not be in the interests of public security, public policy or public order". Essentially, a politician will have the personal power to decide whether an Irish citizen can marry a foreigner, or whether two foreigners can marry each other. "Public policy" may decree that Katie and Sean aren't the right sort to marry each other.
Not only that, but the Bill will criminalise any priest or registrar who performs a wedding ceremony for two people who do not have the Minister's permission to marry. The wording would seem, in fact, to criminalise anyone who is a witness at such a ceremony, or even someone who drives the happy couple to the altar: "A person who knowingly
a) solemnises or permits the solemnisation of a form of marriage which is, under this section, not a valid marriage,
b) is a party to such a form of marriage, or
c) facilitates such a form of marriage, shall be guilty of an offence."
Readers may imagine that these extraordinary provisions are being put forward as a way to stop foreign people contracting marriages with Irish citizens for no other reason than to acquire residency rights. But this is not so - Irish law does not at the moment confer any such rights by reason of marriage alone and the Bill elsewhere re-enforces this state of affairs. So the Bill's bizarre powers are simply an exercise in absurdly overbearing control-freakery.

As the man said, you couldn't make it up.
Jim Carroll