Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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82. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the number of undocumented migrants under 18 years of age that are currently here. [40749/16]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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By definition, irregular migration, which is after all a clandestine activity, is inherently difficult to estimate, in Ireland as in all other countries. While I am, of course, aware of some of the estimates put forward by the NGO community, it is not possible to have any precision around the number of illegal immigrants in the State. This is compounded by the fact that persons under 16 years of age are not, in any event, required to have their presence in the State registered with the authorities. Estimating the remaining cohort, namely those of 16 to 18 years of age, suffers from the same difficulty as establishing a figure for the number of illegal immigrants generally.