Mr. Alan O'Leary:

We also made it clear that we were not in favour of opting in. Even in what could be a positive burden-sharing agreement, there are still more negatives than positives.

Regarding the Senator’s point about 1.2 billion refugees, we mentioned in our opening statement that approximately 74% of migrations occurred outside the EU. That is likely to be the same for the 1.2 billion refugees. Ireland and the wider EU do not have the greatest burden in terms of bearing the world’s refugees.