Mr. Noel Waters:

I will add something before my colleague replies. Senator Craughwell referred to students, particularly from China. As members are aware regarding the movement of students globally and into Europe and Ireland being an English-speaking country, we have had difficulties with many sellers of education leaving the market. We had concerns about it being used and abused. While I will never say that we are on top of the situation, we are in a better place thanks to the arrangements that we have put in place.

It is a competitive market and brings significant economic activity into a country, but rules change from one country to another. In Ireland, the normal visitor visa, not just for students, is for 90 days, which is the time one can remain without going anywhere near an immigration officer. In the UK, that period is normally 180 days. However, we are in a common travel area, so we have made arrangements. Similar arrangements apply in the case of our student population.

We target a cohort from this competitive market not just from China, but worldwide. It is a good business and we have addressed its more unsavoury aspects, namely, where some of those involved were using it as an opportunity to bypass other immigration controls and work without actually attending language schools or being interested in learning English.