Ms Dara Breathnach:

It is virtually unknowable. The reason for 1983 was because that was supposed to be the transposition date of the original directive. We then got very clear legal advice that this failure has subsisted since 1983 and therefore, we need to make provision for the people who might be affected by that. We have gone through some modelling work with the Department of Social Protection to try to put some numbers on it and estimated there could be in excess of 4,000, coming up to 5,000 applications. That is over a 40-year period. Ultimately, we are not sure it will come to that level. That was our low-end estimate but there will be many people who at this point simply will not be bothered chasing.