Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

If the Senator has evidence of that he should furnish it and I will arrange for it to be examined. There is a difficulty with colleges in that there is no precise legal register or regulation of private colleges in the State. It is not the policy of the Minister to discriminate as between institutions in different parts of the country. The policy is to examine visa applications on their merits.

On the general points raised in consideration of section 2, Senator Ryan returned to the question of the migration patterns. There is a meeting of minds on this Bill. The crucial point is that we have a system of control, which is unexceptionable. Senator Ryan recalled his own experiences of transit through Rosslare. The controls are so relaxed in character that people do not notice them readily when going through. At airports and ports, prior clearance is now a universal norm in European countries.

On the wider Schengen question, raised by the Senator, we always made it clear that we were prepared to accept the full Schengen principle of unrestricted access throughout the European Union area. However, we do not just live in our own island. We live beside a bigger island, which does not accept that principle should be implemented. The common travel area is something that has been important since the foundation of the State. It was of course interrupted during the war years, when there were controls – a fact that is often forgotten. The common travel area is deeply ingrained in our cultural consciousness. It would be difficult for us to implement the Schengen Agreement and have to institute controls at the land frontier with Northern Ireland. It is not a practicable proposition. The Government is committed to and would like to see what the Senator envisages, namely, free movement throughout the European Union. That is why we are trying at European Union level to devise legal responses to this problem of uncontrolled migration.

Question put.

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