Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This was cited by a number of community leaders we met, particularly in Vancouver. Vancouver has become a huge attraction for Irish emigrants and Irish students. It is a very welcoming city and there are huge opportunities there. It was cited that there is a much easier system to manage there. We would like to get people home as well. We hope to bring as many people home as we can, and for them to bring back their experience of Canada. I also make the point that the Irish in Canada go back generations. This has been a consistent thing, long before there were issues with J1 visas. There has been consistent travel in both interactions. Indeed, one of the Canadian companies we met in the context of foreign direct investment, FDI, has had a base in Ireland since the mid-1960s, which was even before our EU membership. That shows how, even then when there were not too many international countries investing in Ireland, Canadian companies were doing so.