Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I said, this is an important issue. While there was heightened expectation that this might happen, on 6 February Speaker Boehner expressed doubt in that regard. It is clear from the outcome of the discussions that the upcoming District Level primary contests and the November Congressional elections are proving to be the dominant factors in Republican party thinking. This was confirmed by Congressman Gowdy in a discussion with Ambassador Anderson on 12 February when he said that electoral considerations were the dominant part of those discussions.

The Tánaiste visited Washington on 11 and 12 July last and attended a series of meetings in Capitol Hill. He met with the US Administration, five Republican members of the House, three of them members of the judiciary committee and Minority Leader Pelosi. The Tánaiste also wrote to Speaker Boehner. An all-party delegation from the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, led by the Chairman, Deputy Pat Breen and including Deputies Nash, Crowe and Senator Mark Daly visited Washington last October. They had 15 separate meetings with members of the US Congress during which they highlighted the position of the 50,000 currently undocumented. The delegation identified from their exchanges a will among Republican members to enact a set of piecemeal immigration reform measures, to which Deputy Martin referred. I do not rule out that but it might face serious challenges in the face of looming deadlines in terms of consideration of other matters such as debt ceilings and so on.

For the Deputy's information, I will outline the latest position. Following passage of the Senate Bill on 27 June last the issue has been under consideration by the Republican controlled House of Representatives. Early last month, further public comments from Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Cantor and Chief Whip McCarthy again raised hopes that the Republican leadership in the House saw the need to proceed with immigration reform. To that end, they prepared a set of draft principles that would guide their action on immigration in the House and they presented them to members of their caucus for consideration at a meeting on 30 January 2014. Informed by this, Speaker Boehner gave his press conference on 5 February. These things are disappointing when expectations are raised. For our part, we will engage as comprehensively as we can with American representation in the hope of bringing this matter to a successful conclusion. It is in their interests as much as ours.

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