Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Ms McGinley, Ms Lowry and Mr. Montenegro and thank them for their submissions to this committee. I am very supportive of the general principle of the regularisation scheme for undocumented migrants in Ireland.

The Migrant Rights Centre Ireland does excellent work and I commend its work. It is a very difficult job and from listening to Jayson Montenegro it can sometimes be very emotional because of some of the cases the centre deals with.

My first question is about the figure of between 20,000 to 26,000 undocumented migrants. How has this information been compiled? I refer to the submission to the committee which states that the MCRI has dealt with 2,644 undocumented migrants from 96 different countries. Where do the figures of 20,000 and 26,000 come from?