Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail)

There is. There is a commitment in the programme for Government, agreed by the Government, to advancing driver exchange with the United States. The real complication is the exchange has to be done with each individual state. It is not on an overall national basis. We have started work on that.

I met Minister of State, Neale Richmond, a couple of weeks ago about this. We have identified and are identifying a number of states we would like to engage with where there are high volumes of travel between those states and here and also an Irish diaspora within them. This is not exclusive to the Irish diaspora and it would be a full licence exchange. We have done it successfully with most of the provinces in Canada. It is something I want to advance. It will take a bit of time because we are dealing with 50 states. Germany is the EU state that has the most driver licence exchanges, with about 24 or 25 states. A lot of that is due to the legacy of US armed forces bases that were in Germany and licence exchanges for military personnel who were moving back to the US. The Deputy is right, in that it is an impediment for people who want to move here or returning immigrants. It is something we want to address but it will be on a state-by-state basis, so it will take time.