Mr. Ted Neville:

I thank the Chairman and Deputy McGrath. I believe the hypocrisy, if there is hypocrisy, is wholly and solely on the part of legislators and the Government of this country for pleading in America for illegal Irish, and putting that position against our situation here in Ireland. Undoubtedly it is a failure of the State through many generations that it has not been able to productively employ its people in their own country, and that is a great shame. However, it is not a quid pro quo, that because we went abroad to America as a nation of emigrants, as people from many other countries did, we are then bound to accept limitless quantities of people from Africa or sub-Saharan Africa or Asia or wherever else. Jurisdiction for controlling immigration in the US is properly a matter for the United States Government. I do not see it as the Deputy is perhaps implying to some extent, as a population swap. It certainly has been a poor feature of the State since its foundation that it has not been able to find productive employment for its own citizens - it is a great failure. I lament that during the illusory boom we had at the turn of the century, at a time when there were many illegal Irish in the US, that we as a Government and as a State did not actively seek and publicise that we wished those people would return to this country where they could be legal. Instead employers, driven by all kinds of agendas, were much happier to bring in foreign people who could be employed very willingly at possibly lower rates of pay and so forth. Our duty in the boom, which has gone, was to bring our expatriated people home to work productively in their own country. We did not do that.

It is rather lamentable that we now have to go cap in hand with bowls of shamrock every St. Patrick's Day around the world asking will people take our Irish from us and keep them. We should want them here. That is what we should have done and we did not do it. I do not see a quid pro quoas a population swap between that situation and us taking peoples from all over the world without limit and without input.