Mr. Michael Kirrane:

On citizenship, the rules in respect of people who apply for citizenship are the same whether they are in this jurisdiction or the North. They have to fulfil the residency requirements in the exact same way as people living here are asked to produce evidence that they have been resident in the State for particular time. It is total of five years, the first four of which can be spread over an eight-year period and the final year of which has to be permanent residency. The way in which we ask people to verify that is through their immigration permission. In the North of Ireland that immigration permission comes from the UK immigration authorities. We seek that information from the applicant. In our case we would have that information from our own records but in the North we do not because applications for residency in Northern Ireland are dealt with by the UK Home Office. That is where we sometimes find delays in getting that information back. We do not treat anybody any differently regardless of whether they are in the South or in the North. In respect of visas for non-nationals, I am not quite sure I understand the difficulty. Any application for a visa from the North would normally be made through our London office and we do not have any backlogs of visa cases in that office.