John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

Will the Minister of State elaborate on the proposed idea for an on-line database for illegal Irish immigrants living in the USA, to gain an accurate picture of how many such persons there are? As the Minister of State knows, the estimates vary. The US Government estimates 3,000 while we estimate between 20,000 and 50,000. What is the exact figure? Could there be potential difficulties with this idea, in that people do not wish to put forward their names because they are illegal? Is there a problem that perhaps could be solved if they remained anonymous, but then we would not get the accurate data?

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