There is a perception abroad that we have thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers in Ireland. I have checked the figures and found that there are about 39,920 people from the applicant countries already in the Republic of Ireland. That is quite large a number. The number of jobs available should dictate the number of applicants accepted from the day one. If, for instance, there was a concerted campaign to bring in 50,000 people from the applicant countries to flood the employment market here, we would have no opportunity of preventing this. Irrespective of discussions that took place at the time of the referendum, circumstances have changed radically in terms of opportunities, and Ireland is an extremely attractive location for asylum seekers – there are about 20,000 Romanians in the country, although Romania may not be successful in gaining entry to the European Union, having accepted only 16 of the 31 chapters for accession which must be accepted before 2004.