The leader of the Labour Party, Mr Ruairi Quinn, has criticised the Department of Justice for refusing what he said were valid visa applications for family members of legal immigrants living and working here.
Mr Quinn was speaking after an Algerian-born Irish citizen, Mr Lahdi Boulmeth, went public about the refusal by the Department of Justice to grant a visa allowing his mother to visit him and his wife in Ireland after the birth of their first son in November. Mr Boulmeth, a caterer, has lived and worked in the State for 23 years.
Despite an appeal and the intervention of Mr Quinn, who tabled Dail questions on the issue last December, the decision was not overturned. The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, said at the time that the department "was not satisfied that the applicants' visit would be genuinely short-term in nature".
Speaking on Marian Finucane's RTE radio show yesterday, Mr Boulmeth said his mother had a husband, seven children and a farm in Algeria and would not want to remain in Ireland after her visit.
"I would have loved to see my mother here with us to see her new grandson . . . then she would have gone back home," Mr Boulmeth said.
Mr Quinn said he was angry that a fellow Irish citizen had been treated in this way. "If an Irish-born US citizen was refused permission for relations to visit them in the States there would be outrage," he said.
Calling for a proper appeal process and increased resources in the Department, he said he was aware of several similar cases.
One of these involves an Indian engineer who was recruited by an Irish company last September because of the shortage of indigenous labour. Because the request for visas for his family is currently subject to an appeal, neither the man nor his employer wished to be identified.
In a letter seen by The Irish Times, his employers requested that the man's wife and children be given visas to enter the State. The employee has regularly carried out work in Government Buildings. "So impressed are the various Departments by him that he is often requested by name to attend to these sites," his employer said.
Describing the man as a "valued employee", he said the company went to a great deal of trouble and expense to attract the man to this country and that it would be a "great loss" if he were to leave because his family could not join him.
The application was turned down on the grounds that "the Department is reluctant to grant a visa to a spouse of a person who has been in the State for a relatively short period of time".
Though reluctant to discuss individual cases, a Department spokesman said yesterday that officials had been requested to listen to the radio programme which featured Mr Boulmeth to see if it contained any information that might be relevant to his case. He said the Department received 35,000 visa applications a year, of which only 10 per cent were refused.
"The position at the moment in relation to Mr Boulmeth is that the decision stands but none of these decisions are set in stone," the spokesman said. He added that the Department would be glad to hear from Mr Boulmeth with any further information that might be relevant.