Mr. Pablo Rojas Coppari:

I will start with the question on previous regularisation schemes. We have implemented a number of regularisations over the years. The largest one was in 2005 called the Irish born child scheme, which was a direct consequence of the change in our citizenship legislation.

There was a ruling from the Supreme Court in 2003 that said the parents of Irish children did not have an automatic right to residence in the State as part of the change in legislation in 2005 following the 2004 referendum. The Department of Justice and Equality decided to implement a regularisation called the Irish born child scheme addressing the needs of parents of children who had Irish citizenship. That regularised approximately 17,000 people at the time. There have been minor regularisations since, one was called the undocumented worker scheme in 2009 that addressed more or less 2,000 applicants. It was such a success that the Government decided to introduce it as a permanent mechanism in our employment permit legislation which means that any person who entered the country legally on a work permit and fell out of that system could apply to regularise their status. We have also introduced several policy measures to ensure that people keep their legal status. They are not regularisation procedures but they are measures to ensure that people do not fall into irregularity. Some parts of the International Protection Act 2015 have already commenced, some are due to commence between now and early in the new year. The Act deals exclusively with the means by which people can apply for and obtain forms of international protection including refugee status and subsidiary protection so it does not cover the category of people we are dealing with. It is part of what was intended to be the immigration residents and protection Bill which would address the immigration and residency needs of the broader migrant population in the State so it does not cover the category of people we are discussing today.

To answer the question about nationality. There are two reasons for this: these also represent the largest non-EU communities in Ireland. Irregular migration is somehow related to migration trends, the Philippinos, Chinese and Mauritians constitute a large population of migrants in Ireland regardless. It is also to deal with the difficulty for a person who is undocumented to obtain a visa and different migration patterns. I do not think there is any government to government lobbying from these countries. They have different approaches to migration. Approximately 10% of the population of the Philippines lives abroad. It has put in place many measures to protect the interests of their nationals abroad such as an overseas fund. The Philippine embassy can be supportive to undocumented migrants here. Other countries, such as China, do not recognise the status of their migrants. From the official perspective there is no such thing as a Chinese emigrant. Mauritius does not have an embassy here which makes it more difficult. The peculiarity of the Irish undocumented in the United States and the long-established advocacy to regularise their situation comes from a very strong policy in the Irish State and a long-standing emigration pattern over generations whereas the history of immigrants to Ireland is much shorter.

In response to the question of how people fall into irregularity, one of the main reasons was a rapid change in Government policy in 2011 in which people residing here as students could not stay longer than seven years in total. This would have been the case of the father of Sara-Jane who lived here for seven years as a student and when the policy was introduced it was implemented immediately and there was no transitional measure for allow someone like him who had been studying and working for a certain period to remain here or move to an employment permit or other formal status. Automatically everyone who was living here for seven years or reaching the seven year limit was told they had to return home. Many people who had invested effort, money, built families and put down roots here decided to stay here undocumented and hope that over time a solution would be introduced to address their needs. The Government did introduce that for certain categories of migrants but it is very complicated. I can discuss that with the committee afterwards but do not want to take up other people's time. This is a very good example of how people become undocumented, mainly as a result of policy changes that do not take full consideration of the implications for the population.

The main barrier to accessing support is that the rights and entitlements of a child younger than 18 are assessed on the basis of the parents' status. Even if children younger than 16 do not have to provide their immigration status they are assessed on the basis of their parents' status. Another main barrier is access to personal public service, PPS, numbers. Even though everyone residing in the State is entitled to a PPS number regardless of legal status, for a child to obtain one he or she must prove that his or her parents have one. As undocumented persons they are routinely barred from obtaining PPS numbers because they need to provide proof of employment or other reasons why they are seeking a PPS number. That is the most common barrier to accessing services.

The undocumented population in Ireland is approximately 0.5% of the overall population, which is significantly lower than countries such as the United States and other countries in Europe where that coefficient would generally be around 1.5%. That is to do with how geographically isolated we are and the migration routes and trends in the State.