MINISTER FOR Justice Dermot Ahern has ordered a review of immigration procedures after apologising before the High Court to a Somali woman over "profound systems failures" which resulted in her husband and three children being left in an Ethiopian refugee camp for the last three years.
The family were never told of the department's decision to grant them visas in 2005.
The 30-year-old woman, who fled Somalia in 2003 and secured refugee status here in 2004, was in court yesterday when counsel for the Minister said he "sincerely apologises" to her over what had happened.
"We have no excuses for it," Sara Moorhead SC said.
The woman pushed tears from her eyes when the short hearing had ended. Visas for her husband and children, now aged eight and nine years, and her adopted child - her deceased brother-in-law's 16-year-old daughter - were reissued on Monday and have now been collected.
The family is expected to be reunited within weeks.
After applying for her family to join her here under the family reunification process, the woman had made several unsuccessful efforts over the past three years to find out what was happening to her application.
She said the department had failed to reply to several letters from herself and her solicitors and it was only in late 2007, when her solicitors secured her department file under the Freedom of Information Act, that she realised the visas had been issued in August 2005.
The department had initially refused to release the file but eventually did so following an appeal within its internal structures.
The woman's solicitors continued to press the department to reissue the visas and were finally told last month that they could be collected by her husband and children at the Irish Embassy in Addis Ababa.
But when her family went to the embassy, it said it had had no communication with the department and there were no visas for collection.
The woman then instructed her lawyers to initiate High Court proceedings aimed at securing orders directing the minister to issue the visas. She also sought damages for breach of her rights, and it is likely she will seek leave to proceed with the claim for damages when the case comes before the court in October.
Ms Moorhead said the Minister "sincerely apologises" for what was "a profound systems failure". He did not dispute the woman's version of events and "sincerely regrets what has gone on". "We don't have excuses for it," she added.
She also said "heaven and earth have been moved" to try and improve the woman's situation and her side would take all steps to assist her.
The Minister's spokeswoman later said he had ordered a review of procedures in the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service. Immigrant groups are critical of the family reunion process, which they say is unclear and chronically slow. The department says applications take up to 24 months to process with a backlog of 2,000 cases.
The Somali woman's barrister, John Trainor SC, said he could not put his client's distress into words. His side noted what had been said on behalf of the Minister and, "no doubt, comfort would be taken".
In an affidavit, the woman said she has been "very distressed by being apart from my husband and children knowing they are at risk where they are and am extremely upset at the time it has taken to secure visas . . . The time apart from them can never be replaced. I have lost three years with my children as they grow up."
Arrangements are being made with an aid agency to fly the family to Ireland. A spokeswoman for the department said as a general rule it did not pay for refugees' family members to travel to Ireland, and "that will be the same in this case".
Fine Gael spokesman on children Alan Shatter said the woman's treatment was "scandalous and unacceptable" and amounted to a "gross act of maladministration".