Ms Una Boyd:

A relatively small number of people have been affected by cases such as that of Ms DeSouza. While working as an immigration solicitor in Belfast I encountered a lot of people who were in a very similar situation post 2012. It is very hard to tell how many people have been affected by this because many chose to renounce, as advised by the UK Home Office. They renounce and reapply and the problem quietly goes away, but many others instead choose to take the route of using the UK immigration rules. We have not really seen the cases where the person was affected but managed to resolve the issue by taking a different route. It is the campaigning by Ms DeSouza that has brought many families and cases to the fore and given them a place where they can say this happened to them and how it has affected them. As Mr. Holder said, it previously affected a very small group of people, namely, those who wished to bring non-EU spouses to Northern Ireland, but it has now completely opened up and may affect anyone born in Northern Ireland who considers himself or herself to be an Irish citizen.