As well as meeting Irish government officials to discuss the undocumented Irish living in America and the global crisis, the visiting U.S. Congressional party in Ireland has met with a delegation from the Ulster Political Research Group (UPRG) in Dublin.

The UPRG met with the American delegation on Monday to discuss the issue of former loyalist prisoners in Ireland being allowed visas to the United States in a gesture to recognize the decommissioning of weapons that began over the weekend.

The UPRG, a group that has ties to the Ulster Defense Association (UDA), one of the paramilitary groups that started decommissioning over the weekend, released a statement saying that the meeting had taken place to go over a number of issues, among them the possibility of visa for former prisoners.

"This would be an appropriate way for the U.S. government to recognize the significance of loyalist decommissioning," the statement read.