Mr. Richard King:

I thank the committee for the invitation today and the opportunity to speak. Ms Kennelly very much raised the point about the wrap-around supports and what we offer. We collectively offer help on how we are going to support funded organisations and consular services both in Dublin and worldwide. We can certainly attest to the phenomenal work by consular services abroad. We have a very close relationship with the office in Dublin. We do much work on very intense and difficult cases that come from an embassy or mission to Dublin and to us. We then engage with the service here. It is amazing and a model other countries look to and of which they would be envious.

In terms of what we need to be doing, sometimes it is easy to look for very big asks. People say things like we should have a one-stop shop or have some legislative change. By way of illustration, when we were lobbying around the habitual residence scheme, when we actually got a change in the wording implemented, it had a great effect. We saw an improvement in how people were being treated and dealt with. Organically over the years, with the moving of staff and the issue maybe becoming less recognised, some of the old problems are creeping back in.

The point I am trying to make is that it is a body of work across multiple agencies and some of the work is bureaucratic. It is around constant things. It is around training and small changes. There may not be a super big thing we can do that generates all that attention, but there is so much expertise, energy and intelligence contained within the organisations and the services. I think we can very easily collectively look at applying ourselves to these issues. We can absolutely identify the ones that are consistent or new and that might need to be addressed.

We, the CIIC and all the other groups are funded to provide support. We are here and this is what we do; we work with the people. These days it is almost a luxury to have a bespoke service where a person can talk to someone face to face. It is absolutely what people coming back deserve, however, and especially those in crisis. We are here to do that. We are not necessarily expecting that every Department will put in place a returning emigrant-specific group or assign people, but we need them to work with us to address those gaps and blocks we can see appear in that work, whether it is access to health service, getting PPS numbers long before people come back home, or driving licences. We just need to apply ourselves and work through those things.

Certainly from our side, and I think we can speak for all the agencies and groups we work with in the emigrant support programme, we would be very much on board with doing that collegially and critically, if needs be, but in a very positive and constructive way. We would like to second our own proposal in terms of a subcommittee or someone to look after the interdepartmental committee. If we can just get the right people on board and people in those Departments who can implement change, we can make positive changes. They will trickle down and out and that will send a message that helps address some of those perceptual barriers and helps people on return. We would be very happy to help in any way we can.