Mr. Nikoloz Samkharadze:

No problem. Since the question was asked, I wanted to give the committee the full information. This information is public. One can also access the information about the lobbying contract and one will see the names and the actions that are listed there.

On the asylum seekers, we have had a meeting with the Department of Justice and we have addressed this issue. Deputy Troy is completely right. These are mostly economic migrants who seek to come to Ireland. There are certain ideas on how we can help mitigate this problem. The first is that very soon, we will have a police attaché attached to the Georgian Embassy who will work closely with Ireland's immigration authorities. The second is that all Georgians who come to Ireland require visas. Obviously, one cannot come to Ireland without a visa. Most of the asylum seekers, as we understand it, do not have visas. That means that the air carriers have to check them rigorously prior to departure and if these Georgian citizens do not have Irish visas, they can even be not allowed to travel to Ireland. This is something also that should be discussed with the air carriers. The third option is the circular migration scheme that we have with many European Union member states, which gives an opportunity for Georgian citizens to work legally in European Union member states for some time and then they return to Georgia. We had a similar situation with Austria, Germany and France several years ago and legalisation of the work flow has drastically decreased the number of such Georgian citizens. Plus, Georgia is a safe origin country and the accelerated procedure of considering the asylum applications is also helping there because, for example, in Germany, the approval rate is just 0.1%. There are certain legal remedies that can be used but also there are certain tools, one of which is circular migration, to make this process legal and to allow people to come to work here legally and then go back to Georgia. A combination of these steps will solve the problem very soon.

Finally, on the Cathaoirleach's remark, I do not want to be misunderstood. The law is off the table. This convocation of Parliament will not discuss the law but then we will have elections and there might be other people who will be elected to the Parliament who might have other views about this. What I wanted to say is that we are for transparency of funding. Of course, transparency of funding is an important principle for every organisation that wants to be involved in decision-making and policymaking but, of course, this transparency of funding does not imply that their activities should or can be restricted at any stage or in any manner. This is what I wanted to make clear from our side.