The last point the Minister made in the context of my letter was that while he had no plans to amend Irish nationality legislation at present, his Department was keeping the legislation under review, which dovetails with what the Minister said today. I strongly urge the Minister to bring forward whatever proposals he has in legislative form in this area. We need an urgent debate on this matter for a very clear reason: in 1998 there were 588 applications for naturalisation as Irish citizens, which is less than five years ago. In the last year for which statistics are available, 2002, there were 3,190 applications for naturalisation. Those are significant figures in the context of our population.