Ms Karen McHugh:

It is certainly challenging. We have only two outreach workers covering the 26 counties. We visit all our UK applicants throughout the UK. We do information clinics throughout the UK. Our funds are stretched drastically. We can probably just about manage. I am the CEO of the organisation and I also do casework, which as a practice I like to do in any role I have had. However, it is not necessarily appropriate. Our co-ordinator who is an office-based worker also does outreach work and casework which is not their role either. We are trying to stretch ourselves as widely as possible.

We have home-based offices which are at no cost to the State. We have volunteers doing our very fancy publicity work, etc., because we do not have any budget for extras, equipment or anything like that. Ideally, if we had more resources we could provide a much wider service.

We currently can only work in the UK with applicants and visits. We would also like to be able to do that in the United States. We have noticed a significant increase, including some who are returning tomorrow, who are undocumented and cannot afford to live there and have to return to health grounds. Our resources are being stretched in all sorts of ways and we certainly could do more if we had more resources. We have obviously had an increase. I am sure it is Government policy to consider cuts every year. We are hopeful that will not affect any of the three organisations.