Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:

The Deputy has touched on a couple of things. There is an awareness issue. This group of people have been through such hardships that they might not want to identify as part of the group that was subjected to this severe start in their lives. They came through at different times. Following the awareness raising for people outside the State, quite a high proportion of claims were from people in the United Kingdom which shows that quite a number of the people who left are in the United Kingdom. I think 33% of them are in the United Kingdom and 6% in other countries. They became aware at different times of what was available in different ways. When we explain that costs went up and that the numbers of applications increased at certain times, we are not doing so to apportion blame to people for applying late.