Ms Edel McGinley:

Our most recent scheme was the undocumented workers scheme in 2009, which responded to people who fell out of the work permit system. It was a very successful scheme which was time-bound and limited. It has been put on a statutory footing and is now called the reactivation scheme, which is currently being administered by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.

One of the most recent schemes was in Belgium. It was a broad-based scheme. It had problems because it operated as an amnesty, which led to a major backlog. It took approximately two years to clear that because each case had to be assessed at the point of entry. We are proposing with the probationary period that two years will be given for the Department to assess schemes over time; it will not be a once-off consideration that could lead to a bottleneck. That happened in the Belgian scheme, and three years afterwards some people were still not regularised, despite an entitlement to same.

Another learning element comes from the type of immigration status given to a person when he or she is regularised. Part of the Belgian scheme gave people work permits and others full access to the labour market. Those who were given work permits became undocumented again as there were major problems with getting work permits and unscrupulous employers. What is given to people when they become regularised is very important, as we either set people up to fail or achieve something. The key learning elements from the Belgian regularisation were not to create a bottleneck and to give a stamp that helps people realise a method of being regularised properly.