Mr. Ciaran Staunton:

I am the chairman of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform. I have worked in the United States for over 30 years and dealt with Irish people who have gone there illegally, from the era of the Donnelly visas in the 1980s to the Morrison visas in the 1990s to Ted Kennedy, John McCain and many others. I am sure I have met many Members who have travelled to the United States. I have circulated some of my remarks, following which I understand I will take questions.

I am accompanied by Ms Karen McHugh who has been dealing with people for many years. She lived in London but is now dealing with people who are returning home, especially to rural Ireland. I am also accompanied by Ms Maureen O'Sullivan who lived in the United States for many years and is now helping people who are returning to Ireland. Mr. Michael McMahon is a leader of the group Families of the Undocumented Irish.

Addressing the issues that face returning citizens feeds into a larger national plan for rural revitalisation and is, I believe, the desire of most members of the committee. The benefits of economic recovery have not been evenly distributed across rural and other areas. Since the demise of the Celtic tiger, over 300,000 people have left the jurisdiction. Probably 100,000 have left the North. Emigration continues to affect rural parts of Ireland to a greater extent than urban areas. We have found that in rural areas at least one in four households has been directly affected by emigration since 2006.

Naturally, some people may want to come back to Ireland. We know about the uncertainty that has been created by the Trump Administration. People who have lived in the United States for ten or 15 years are trying to figure out whether they need to come back to Ireland because the last President did not do anything for them. When they come back, they will face a number of issues, on which I will touch briefly, but I will not go into them in depth because there are so many to be addressed.

Some obstacles for those returning to rural Ireland include securing entitlements from the national reserve because they must have a green certificate and show their tax returns for 2013 or 2014. Everyone knows that when a person is working illegally, he or she cannot pay taxes; therefore, he or she is deemed ineligible. I could go into that issue further.

Taking out car insurance is another issue in rural Ireland. After being after away for two to five years, a person loses his or her no claims bonus and goes back to the start of the insurance process. A friend of ours expected to pay €430 for car insurance, but because she had been away for ten years her the cost of insurance policy came in at €1,900.

The position on driving licences is crazy and getting worse. People from counties Kerry, Galway and Mayo and so on who have been out of the country for over ten years have to start from scratch. If they return from California, their Californian driving licence is no good, but if they come back from Canada, their licence is deemed to be fine and can be changed for an Irish one. If a person returns to west Kerry, having lived in the Bronx for many years, and shows his or her driving licence to the authorities, he or she will have to start from scratch. He or she will have to obtain another licence, have L-plates on a car and sit the driving test which will involve paying thousands of euro for driving lessons. In the meantime, he or she cannot drive on major roads.

One has to pay thousands of euro to get driving and in the meantime one cannot drive on the major roads that one could have driven on previously.

To open a bank account now, one must, according to some, have utility bills. Again, we have found there are waivers. As one of our people said recently when she met the Irish ambassador to the US, it is easier for an illegal to open a bank account in America than it is for someone to open a bank account when he or she returns home. It is absolutely disgraceful. Loans are a big issue when someone moves here and wants to check in with the bank. If people want to buy into farming, they must show they have basic payments but they would not have anything along those lines. The US system of credit rating is not recognised in Ireland, although it is recognised throughout the states so a person has no credit rating and is starting from zero. People cannot get first-time buyers' allowance if they have owned a house, so again they are being penalised.

We continuously say we are not talking about returning Irish emigrants but returning Irish citizens. Nowhere in Bunreacht na hÉireann does it say that once a person leaves the country for any number of years that one is no longer a full Irish citizen. Look at the 1916 executed leaders. James Connolly, Thomas Clarke and Major John McBride were returned Irish emigrants, or leaders. Michael Collins lived for many years in London. Michael Davitt, the founder of the Land League, would not even be regarded as being eligible to farm in Ireland at the moment. Those are some of the areas.

What is the Government to do? All the issues we have discussed have not been created by bureaucracy but by Governments and Departments. We have tried to deal with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine for quite some time on a number of those issues but it has fallen on deaf ears. We have also tried to deal with the Minister of State with responsibility for the diaspora on a number of those issues because they are issues about which we have talked in the past. When the wheels lift up on the airplane, the Irish citizen is dealt with by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade but when that airplane lands, the Irish citizen is thrown to the wind. In regard to education, for example, if someone wants to go back to school after being away, which is what happened to Ms Sullivan, he or she has to pay a non-EU rate or wait three years in the country before going back into education. It is the same for people who come back from America or Australia and they have Irish children. If their Irish children go back into national school or into first or second year of post-primary, they are fine for third level but if they go back in any later than that, their children are not treated equally as Irish citizens.

Who is looking after the 300,000 people from every constituency who were on the census in 2006 but who have disappeared? When they come back and run into problems, what agency or who looks after them? We know there was a big announcement in 2015 of an agency which was supposed to meet quarterly and was supposed to issue reports. I have yet to get any reports. I have asked the person in charge about issues and we are still getting the standard response, which is very hurtful to anybody who has been an emigrant. How many people are we talking about? How many people are coming back? How many farmers are there? The Constitution does not count heads, as far as I know.

The same issues come up over and over when people come back. There are always new situations but most of the situations we face have came about over the last number of years. Most of the people who went away in the 1980s and came back in the 1990s and have been credited by many taoisigh and parties of creating a landing pad for the Celtic tiger did not face these issues.

We say we want people to come back to rural Ireland and that great work has been done in rural Ireland on the big problems. However, we all agree the Internet is a disaster. We do not need to reach up to the very high things; we can deal with the low-hanging fruit. It is all within the gift of Departments. Every issue I have raised can be dealt with but people do not care. I say with a heavy heart that there is a complete lack of empathy among Government agencies as to the plight of returning citizens. As the chairman of Irish Lobby for Immigration for Reform, I have written on behalf of the organisation and the letters I got from Government agencies regarding returning Irish emigrants are absolutely appalling. I would not even put them in the public domain because I do not think anyone should be embarrassed to that degree. However, I do not believe that the people who wrote our great Constitution thought that their people would be dealt with like that.

I would like to see this committee play a bigger role. We are all familiar with the famous book, "No one Shouted Stop!", from the 1960s which was written by the great John Healy. We are in a position again where these people are coming back and are being treated so appallingly. It is disgraceful. We do not have anyone in the Dáil or at this committee. I will not name names but would this committee cry "stop"? What this committee is trying to do is maintain and to hold on to rural Ireland and yet those who want to come back to where they were born, to family and to family farms, are faced with obstacles, including in terms of banking.

I will certainly answer any questions on where we might go from here. We know that it is all do-able. I will wrap up with that.