Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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112. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality if his Department has considered putting in place an earned regularisation scheme for undocumented workers as outlined by the Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51128/13]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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I am familiar with the proposals put forward by the Migrant Rights Centre in this area but at present I have no plans to introduce any form of earned regularisation scheme. It remains the responsibility of all non-EEA nationals who are resident in the State to ensure that they have an appropriate permission from the Minister for Justice and Equality and the great majority of migrants comply with this condition.

If a person is undocumented his /her case can be considered on its merits by officials in the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service of my Department. Sometimes this consideration will result in a positive outcome for the applicant. In other cases, the decision by the Irish authorities, subject to the oversight of our Courts, would be that the person has to go home. That decision should be respected.

Broad regularisation programmes are problematic. They could give rise to unpredictable and potentially very costly impacts across the full range of public and social services. At EU Level, the Member States, in agreeing the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum at the European Council in October 2008 made specific commitments "to use only case-by-case regularisation, rather than generalised regularisation, under national law, for humanitarian or economic reasons". While the Pact is not legally binding, the political commitment among Member States, then and now, is clearly against any form of process that would in any way legitimise the status of those unlawfully present without first examining the merits of their individual cases. In our case there are also significant considerations based on maintaining the integrity of the Common Travel Area with the UK which must be taken into account.