Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

There are many ethnic groups being dealt with in most of the major Irish emigrant centres. I want the system to be as flexible as possible and I suggested to my officials that as we had built the funding up to a critical mass, we should provide some small capital grants. Emigrant centre officials have told me that if they could inform the local authority in London, Manchester or wherever that they had obtained funding from the Irish Government, the local authorities in the UK would follow on. That has been beneficial.

The situation in the US on the legislation for emigrants is a source of disappointment, but we are keeping a close eye on it. I was in the US recently where I met representatives of the ILIR, the lobby group for Irish emigrants. I also met representatives of emigrant advice centres and we are keeping a close eye on things. The legislation is not dead. The mid-term elections have knocked all legislation off course, including the US-India agreement. We will come back to it, but I do not know whether we will come back to it as before or find another way of doing it.

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