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The Government have today published their Implementation Plan for the EU Migration Pact. I will provide a brief run down of this at the weekend, but in the meantime, the following is noteworthy: 1. When I stated that Ireland would end up having to take in approx. 30,000 asylum seekers annually (noting that Helen McEntee said this was "disinformation") - under this plan, the Government are saying they expect to take in up to 24,000 asylum seekers annually (so if they are saying 24,000, you know that 30,000 was actually a conservative estimate). 2. The Government have confirmed that "The current indicative cost of an applicant spending 29 months in the international protection process is €122,867 per applicant" - so if we take the number of applications received in 2024, being 18,000 and multiply this by €122,867, we can confirm that the cost of international protection per year is more than €2.2billion (and this excludes the cost of housing Ukrainians). 3. The Government intend to purchase and develop more State-owed (meaning tax-payer owned) accommodation, such that they deliver 14,000 State-owned beds to international protection applicants by 2028. 4. The Government intend on publishing the General Scheme EU Migration Pact Bill (which really just means the high lights) for Ministerial and Government approval in April 2025 - noting that they state that "The Bill should be drafted and published by end 2025 and enacted and operational by June 2026." I am finishing off a script on the new retention of data act that was passed in July 2022, which enabled the Minister for Justice to spy on citizens and which resulted in up to 10 persons receiving letters from X confirming that they had been asked to pass their data onto the Gardai. I should have this out by the end of the weekend, but I am going to try to get something brief published on the below on Saturday morning.