Ms Helen Lowry:

I will, and our director, who previously was involved in the campaign, which is almost five years old, might comment as well. As our numbers grew and we started to research what a solution would look like, we had a proactive engagement with the previous Administration and the previous Minister, Deputy Alan Shatter. The group has been before the Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality regarding the introduction of a regularisation. It has been difficult to get the issue up the political agenda. We had a proactive engagement with members of this committee recently. We have good working relationships with civil servants in the Department of Justice and Equality because of our drop-in centre and because we are at the coalface.

We got feedback on some of our proposals in terms of the possibilities, the cost and the time it would take, so we went back to the drawing board and looked at our regularisation proposal in that period. The Administration then changed, including some of the relationships. There was a turnover in terms of staff, and we now have a new Minister for Justice and Equality. We are in a new phase around some of that, so it has taken us a little while to get to where we are now.