Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)

I made a botún during a press conference where I wrongly accused one of the members of the press for being responsible for that hysteria. I did not mean him personally, but the reported assumption that everyone in the world would move. There was an assumption that more than 1 million people would have moved with the accession of Spain, Portugal and Greece, but that did not happen. However, a serious issue is that in the accession states, the media headline would encourage people to come without being properly educated on the cost of and standard of living, housing and so on. For some reason under accession treaties, countries may make legal changes but they do not have to advise the Commission. The Commissioner has set up a technical group to look at the full evaluation. Nobody has all the information. European Union countries, apart from Britain and Ireland, are changing their labour law as well as social welfare law. Some countries are introducing quotas or something similar to a work permit system. Based on empirical evidence, the view is that 1% of the European population will move. We would all agree that in the main the people who move are single young people looking for a job. Given that we have a common travel area with the United Kingdom, we have followed the British lead and persons must meet a habitual residency requirement in order to get social assistance.