Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Question 322: To ask the Minister for Justice and Law Reform, further to Parliamentary Question No. 355 of 19 October 2010, if he will detail what a visa transaction is; the number of persons granted visas to enable them to enter Ireland for the purpose of attending a full-time higher education course in each of the years 2007, 2008, 2009 and to date in 2010. [40108/10]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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A visa transaction, as referred to in my reply to Parliamentary Question 355 on 19 October 2010 is a single visa application. When completing the first stage of the visa application process (an on-line visa application form) an applicant is assigned a unique visa transaction number. This detail is unique to the application concerned and must be provided where a query on the status or other inquiry regarding a visa application arises. The provision of this unique visa transaction number ensures that accurate and current information is provided to the authorised inquirer.

It is worth reiterating that the figures referred to in my response to Parliamentary Question 355 relate to visa transactions, for non-EEA nationals, resulting in approval decisions and do not refer to unique individuals. There may be instances where a visa applicant may have made multiple applications. Each of these would count as a transaction but, for the reasons outlined above, it cannot be taken that the number of transactions equals the number of persons granted visas in any one year.

For those students requiring a visa, while the subject to be studied and the level of qualification to be obtained are essential considerations in deciding individual study visa applications, the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS) does not routinely produce statistical reports of visa applications using the parameters of course title, awarding body or level of qualification. Although the information requested by the Deputy is, therefore, not readily available, analysis carried out as part of the Final Report and Recommendations into a New Immigration Regime for Full-Time Non-EEA Students may be useful. This analysis showed that there were 12,555 non-EEA students enrolled in higher education courses in October 2008, 13,412 in March 2009 and 12,888 in March 2010.