Ms Helen Lowry:

The issue with social protection is that it is dependent on the person's contributions. Right now, people are just not able to qualify. A decision might need to be made about the two year probationary period. Access to social welfare is earned, so it will not kick in until down the line when people are in the country long term, and have their status and their stamp 4.

In terms of education, we previously worked very closely with the children of non-EU migrants through the migrant education access campaign, MEA, on access to third level. A person has to be a citizen in order to qualify for what are called free fees, which are no longer really free due to the level of the registration fee. We did a good costed analysis of how much it would cost the then Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, to implement changes in that regard and it was a fraction of the education budget. It is really about allowing people who are in the country long term to qualify. Again, it probably would not apply straight away, as parents would have to be legally resident. We would like to see some change around that whereby, for example, somebody who is legally in the country for ten years would have some right of access to the free fees category. However, it still would not apply to undocumented migrants because those young people would not have been legally resident. We probably need to go back to the Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill 2010, and there needs to be a conversation between the Department of Education and Skills and the Department of Justice and Equality. The bigger matter is that the system is still built around citizenship.