Thirty five failed asylum-seekers have been repatriated to Nigeria on charter flight from Dublin.
The flight left Dublin for Lagos early today with 20 gardai and a medical team on board. Two Garda detectives are in Lagos to assist in the operation.
Ireland and Nigeria have a repatriation agreement and today's flight was organised with the full knowledge of the Nigerian embassy in Dublin.
The group included men, women and four children - including two babies - on a flight which was due to leave Dublin airport at midnight. One of the children was born in Britain.
Chief Supt Martin Donnellan, of the Garda National Immigration Bureau, said some of the deportees were arrested in the past week and detained at Mountjoy, and about 20 were arrested in raids on homes throughout the State yesterday.
It follows the deportation of 70 Moldovans and Romanians on a specially chartered plane last week and 65 to those countries in February.
Such deportations, on specially chartered flights, have been criticised in the past by refugee support groups concerned that the deportations were happening in the middle of the night and were increasingly happening "out of public view".