It's been a great start to the year for the Nasc Legal Service. We have an update from our Legal Service Manager, Julie O' Leary on the legal team's work.
Positive decisions under the International Humanitarian Admission Programme continued to arrive for some of Nasc's clients over the last number of weeks. In the last month in particular we assisted a number of clients from the Democratic Republic of Congo to apply for visas for the family members to join them in Ireland, after they had successfully made applications under the IHAP scheme. These included a young man who will be meeting his younger brother for the first time upon arriving in Ireland, and an older woman who will be coming to Ireland to live with her daughter and grandchildren.
Nasc will continue to assist the family members after their arrival to ensure that they can correctly register their immigration permission and access services like healthcare and English classes. To date, 22 Nasc clients have received positive decisions under the second round of IHAP.
We would also like to congratulate a number of our clients who will become Irish citizens at ceremonies due to take place in Killarney next week. Many have been waiting for a decision on their applications for a very long time and we are delighted that they will soon be able to apply for Irish passports.
This week also saw the first evening Walk-In service. We are rolling out an additional walk-in session on the last Thursday of every month to help people who work or study during the day access our service.