A GROUP of Nigerians was deported from the State on Tuesday night on a special charter flight to Lagos.
Gardaí confirmed yesterday that the flight was part of a joint operation involving nine European countries, including France, Spain and Germany. A total of 41 people were deported on the flight, seven of whom were Irish-based.
The operation was assisted by the Warsaw-based EU border security agency, Frontex, which co- ordinates co-operation between member states in the management of external borders.
The Garda National Immigration Bureau had planned to repatriate more Nigerians on this week's flight, but last-minute injunctions kept the number of deportees to seven.
Rosanna Flynn of the Residents Against Racism group said a Nigerian woman and her two children were at the airport when their lawyer secured an injunction preventing their removal from the State. Ms Flynn criticised the "mysterious" and "covert" deportation process, saying it was "grossly out of order" that so little was known about the flights in advance. Citing security reasons, gardaí routinely refuse to confirm details of deportation flights in advance.
"That woman still had a legal path to go down. She was lucky to be got out just in time. How many people are there like her? The system needs more transparency - at least the lawyers could be kept informed," Ms Flynn added.
This week's multinational deportation is one of just a few such operations from the Republic. In March a group of Ghanaians was deported from Dublin on a charter flight, having been assembled here from a number of European countries. Only one of those who travelled that day was deported by the Irish authorities.
Gardaí did not want to deport just one person on the aircraft, which seats about 110 people, and so offered other EU states seats for any Ghanaians they were waiting to deport. That operation was assisted by Frontex.
The operation is believed to have cost at least €100,000.
While applications for refugee status in the Republic are at their lowest level in more than a decade, the largest share of asylum applicants last year came from Nigeria, followed by Iraq, China, Pakistan, Georgia and Sudan.
