Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

First, I need to know the details of the particular case and again I invite Deputy Dooley to let me have them. My Department and the consulate concerned will address it and no doubt will provide assistance to the individual concerned.

This is a problem that has gone on for a very long time. The undocumented Irish in the United States live in a kind of a shadowed existence. As Deputy Dooley stated, they cannot get a driving licence or come back home for a funeral. They are caught in a difficult situation.

As the Deputy will be aware, we have been working for some time to try to get that resolved. We now have a big break on that in the form of the legislation that was published yesterday. We have been working with this group of eight Senators, four Democrats and four Republicans - it is most important that this is a bipartisan approach - who have brought forward legislation on immigration. They have included in that legislation measures that will address the problem of the undocumented Irish in the United States but also allow for a flow of legal migration at this level between Ireland and the United States for the first time since the 1960s. This is a significant development. We need to be mindful that the issue of immigration in the Unites States is a controversial one. It has its own political dimension, as immigration has in this country. We must work with the Senators concerned, the House of Representatives and President Obama's Administration to get this legislation through, and we will do that.

In the meantime, as regards the situation as it affects individuals, I can identify entirely with a person who, just as the legislation is published, finds himself arrested, detained and in a difficult situation. As I stated, if Deputy Dooley lets us have the details, we will deal with the particular case, but I do not want to get into calls for amnesties, which could be unhelpful in the context of getting the legislation advanced.

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