The deportation of failed asylum-seekers should be independently monitored to ensure no "unreasonable practices" are used, according to the Irish Refugee Council, which last night issued new guidelines on deportation. Fiona Tyrrell reports.
Mr Peter O'Mahony, chief executive of the council, said the guidelines were issued "in the light of the fact that another deportation charter has apparently been booked and is due to go to Nigeria in early August".
The IRC said, while it accepted that deportations were a reality, all efforts should be made by the Irish immigration authorities to achieve best practice and learn lessons from "past mistakes in Ireland and elsewhere".
Since 1999, 2004 people have been deported from the State, 590 of them last year. No death or serious injury has occurred during deportations, Mr O'Mahony said; however "the risk is there unless the best practices are followed". Deaths have occurred in recent years during deportations from other European countries, usually from suffocation while being restrained.
"Therefore, to avoid any similar occurrences here, in particular with the increased use of charter deportations, it is essential that Irish immigration officials abide by international human-rights instruments and standards, and that the deportation process is monitored by an independent body, as in the case of France where the Red Cross is permitted to send a representative to witness deportations."
The IRC guidelines also stated that no person should be deported until all proper legal remedies had been exhausted. Deportations should not go ahead where people were unfit to travel and no minors should be deported unless accompanied by parents or appropriate guardians. On one occasion last year, three teenagers from one family were deported unaccompanied by parents or guardians, the IRC said.
In rounding up intended deportees, care should be taken that unnecessary fear was not caused in the wider immigrant community by the arrival of "unreasonable numbers of gardaí at unsociable hours to the home of the deportee", the council added..
A spokesman for the Department of Justice said all deportations are carried out in line with legislation set out in the Immigration Act and the Refugee Act. A Garda spokesman said it would not comment on deportation plans for operational reasons.