The Immigration Bill is "silent" on the deportation of children, the chairman of the Irish Refugee Council said yesterday. Mr Derek Stewart was making a presentation to the Dail Committee on Justice, Equality and Women's Rights.
The submissions brought together both sides of the immigration debate. Refugee support groups sat beside Ms Aine Ni Chonaill representing her Irish Immigration Control Platform in the small committee room.
Ms Ni Chonaill said children were being sent in advance by people seeking asylum status. "There is a growing phenomenon of unaccompanied minors being sent ahead as immigrants, especially in Italy," she said. "It is quite an influx with which we could not deal."
Mr Stewart said that out of the thousands of asylum-seekers just 29 were children. "No child should be deported, at least until they reach the adult age of 18 and even then there should be some kind of basic tracing device."
Sister Majella McCarron, of the Irish Missionary Union, criticised the interview techniques of the Department of Justice officials. "The reasons given for rejection to an asylum-seeker are certainly not up to the level that I could accept as being fair," she said.
"In my mind the question of interviewing and the way of evaluating asylum-seekers has not reached a level that we could open it up to public scrutiny." The reasons for denying asylum were given "in very vague sentences" she said. "I don't like my deportations based on that."
Mr Conall Mac Aongusa, of the Irish Association of Returned Development Workers, Comhlamh, said the issue of the criminal record of an asylum-seeker could be a difficult way to evaluate. "If someone is fleeing persecution under a foreign regime, and they have been convicted under a `kangaroo court' in a foreign country is that admissible as a criminal conviction?"
Ms Ni Chonaill said the Bill should be extended to give powers to deal with "activated" lobbyists who could form "sanctuary groups" and cause trouble in the face of deportations. Sister McCarron said she would not consider the church to be such a "radical" group.
"We hear stories of gardai coming in the middle of the night, handcuffing people and taking them to Mountjoy," Sister McCarron said.
Mr Deir Tong, of the Association of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Ireland, finished his submission by telling a story about a woman crying by the side of the road. When a man passes by and asks her why she tells him her grandfather, father, husband and son have all been killed by tigers there. The man asks her why she stays. "There are no oppressive governments here," is the reply.
"We are not saints. The majority of us are people who are fed up. Our governments are worse than tigers and what we want is to be treated like humans, for us to be given protection here," he said.
Ms Ni Chonaill said there had been "an enormous barrage of political correctness in the media which has attempted to portray any proper deportation as barbarity.
"Deportation is not a dreadful thing," she said. Mr Tong's story "cannot but pull at the heartstrings, but we also have to remember that it is a plain fact of life that it is acknowledged that the asylum process is terribly widely used to get around immigration laws."
