Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. I am afraid my response is to tell us something that we do not know. The difficulty, as he rightly outlined, is that this has been an issue since the 2018 Court of Appeal judgment. Discussions have been ongoing since that time between the Departments so I do not accept there is any urgency among them about trying to resolve this. The issue had always been around those students who were studying in the State for more than one year. It would surely be reasonably easy for the Department of Health to quantify how many “students” potentially impose a burden on our health service of those who are spending more than one year studying here. On the assumption that a significant number of them are younger, they are likely to be healthier and the number is probably fairly small but, in any event, one would imagine that in a four-year period that could have been quantified. I appreciate the Minister of State is only delivering the response but I really do not believe that, after four years some sort of innovative solution could not be found to address what is a relatively simple matter,.