The Government will seek a separate immigration deal to allow the illegal Irish in the US to remain there if proposals to regularise the situation of illegal immigrants from all countries fail to pass through Congress, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has said.
He emphasised that the Government's position was to support the immigration reform Bill sponsored by senators Ted Kennedy and John McCain, which would give some 11 million people living illegally in the US a path to citizenship. An estimated 30,000 to 50,000 of these are Irish.
Mr Ahern said progress had been made this week in discussions at the Senate judiciary committee on how to deal with the matter. "There are a number of proposals around at present and the proposal we in the Irish Government have been supportive of is the Kennedy/McCain Bill," he said.
"It is right that we support that process to the end. There was some progress made yesterday on pulling the several proposals together to see if they can get a workable Bill. Obviously, the president's support along the way would be crucial on that."
On Thursday Mr Ahern had indicated reluctance to seek a separate Irish deal, saying "a patchwork solution never ends up right while a comprehensive solution will not only solve it for now but will solve it for the future".
Senator McCain also said he would be reluctant to start carving out groups.
But yesterday Mr Ahern said that while the correct tactic now was to support the Kennedy- McCain bill, "it doesn't mean that if that doesn't work we will not move to another agenda. I mentioned to the president today that we will be back fighting . . . for an Irish arrangement".
He said he and President Bush also spoke yesterday about the Government's view that the detention centre at Guantánamo Bay should be closed.
"We believe that people should be released or charged and that the humanitarian issue should be fully followed," Mr Ahern said. He added that President Bush had outlined the problems he faced in dealing with terrorist suspects.