Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 11 July 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality

Immigrant Investor Programme and International Protection Applications: Discussion

9:00 am

Mr. Michael Kirrane:

I think I touched on this in my comments earlier. One of the reasons for our review, which will take place in the second half of this year, is to look at that precise question. We have moved the focus of it away from enterprise and job creation in recent years to social housing, primary healthcare centres and nursing homes because there is a perceived shortage of those types of facilities in the State at present. That is where the focus is now. There is also an endowment part of the programme, which, regardless of the outcome of the review, I would see continuing because it is effectively a donation of money for charitable purposes to the State, and it would be hard to argue against the benefit of that directly to the State on that basis.