I have been informed by my officials in the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service that the person referred to by the Deputy arrived in the State in 2007 and is resident here as a dependant of her husband. As stated in my replies to previous Parliamentary Questions on 27 April, 2010 and again on 29 September 2010, dependants of applicants who have been granted Long term Residency can also apply for Long Term Residency after being legally resident in the State for 60 months. This particular long term permission does not grant them an exemption from employment permit requirements. They do not have an entitlement to a Stamp 4 immigration status.
Stamp 4 is applied to a number of different groupings within the immigration system, including long term residents, refugees, spouses of Irish Nationals, dependants of Irish nationals, persons on a working visa, certain family members of EU citizens who qualify under the relevant Regulations and some others. The applicable conditions may vary depending on the category.
The person referred to by the Deputy does not qualify for Stamp 4, at this time, under any of these categories.
I should remind the Deputy that queries in relation to the status of individual Immigration cases may be made direct to INIS by Email using the Oireachtas Mail facility which has been specifically established for this purpose. The service enables up-to-date information on such cases to be obtained without the need to seek this information through the more administratively expensive Parliamentary Questions process.