As with everything to do with immigration into this tiny island, the full picture on deportations always has to be dragged out of the government by inches. <\/p>\n
It appears that, as per a reply from the Department of Justice this week, we in fact have no exit checks to confirm a staggering 90% of the supposed departure of those who have been refused asylum and issued an order in 2025.<\/p>\n
The Department\u2019s reply to the indefatigable Carol Nolan TD shows that of the 4,700 deportation orders issued in 2025, just 434 \u2013 less then 10% \u2013 were either enforced (185), involved removal by charter flight (182), or were \u201cotherwise confirmed\u201d deportations(67).<\/p>\n
\u201cAs there are no routine exit checks at Irish borders, it is not possible to accurately provide the number of people who are currently in Ireland subject to deportation orders,\u201d reads the pertinent line in said reply after much verbiage and plenty self-congratulations in relation to the number of orders issued \u2013 as opposed to executed.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve written about<\/a> the failure to carry out exit checks in relation to \u2018voluntary\u2019 deportations previously, but clearly the government still hasn\u2019t seen fit to take this basic step in regard to gathering critically important information regarding the possible flouting of enormous numbers of deportation orders. (It goes without saying that Gript with a small staff and a tiny budget, is the only national media platform to show any real interest in this matter. The rest might catch up in a while.)<\/p>\n Does this matter? Well, yes it does, for many reasons not least the fact that persons who have been issued with a deportation order \u2013 indeed the State may have been operating under the naive presumption that they did self-deport \u2013 keep turning up in the courts, sometimes charged with the most horrific crimes.<\/p>\n The suspect in the serious sexual assault<\/a> of a 10-year-old child in Citywest had been issued with a deportation order six months before the alleged horrific attack, for example. Last month, an alleged mugger<\/a> with a deportation order was accused of \u201ctargeting\u201d young men out socialising out in Dublin city centre. There are many other such stories, and they can be added to the other consequences of allowing illegal immigrants to flout our laws regarding deportation with impunity.<\/p>\n There is a tacit acknowledgement of that issue in the information released during the week, which stated that 23 persons in one chartered flight operation were removed on the grounds of criminality.<\/p>\n Minister Jim O\u2019Callaghan and his fellow Cabinet Ministers are, as I have noted previously, now talking tough on immigration because public upset and anger at the mess the government has made of the controversial issue \u2013 and at the rapid and unwelcome pace of change being foisted on the country \u2013 can no longer be ignored.<\/p>\n But talking tough and actually tackling the issue are two different things. And while the Minister has announced measures on enforced deportation to great fanfare, the numbers actually being put on planes for return to safe countries like Georgia are tiny \u2013 and are, as my colleague Matt Treacy has pointed out, being outpaced even on the day of departure with the arrival of even economic migrants from the said safe countries claiming asylum.<\/p>\n As Matt wrote last October: \u201cGeorgians have accounted for 260 of those deported this year but in the same period, approximately 500 new Georgian applicants have arrived according to the monthly figures. You do not need to be Issac Newton to do the math.\u201d Indeed.<\/p>\n So the Minister\u2019s insistence that deportation orders have increased significantly is music to the ears of the majority of voters, what is being largely ignored is that the state actually doesn\u2019t even try to confirm how many of those who supposedly are left to \u201cvoluntarily deport\u201d have actually gone.<\/p>\n A closer look at the information provided by the Minister to Carol Nolan this week, shows the following for 2025.<\/p>\n Table 2. Deportation Enforcement 2025<\/p>\n Year<\/p>\n 2025<\/p>\n Enforced Deportations<\/p>\n 185<\/p>\n Removed by Charter<\/p>\n 182<\/p>\n Otherwise Confirmed Deportation (1)<\/p>\n 67<\/p>\n Total Deportations<\/p>\n 434<\/p>\n Other Removals (2)<\/p>\n 61<\/p>\n Number of Voluntary Returns<\/p>\n 1,616<\/p>\n Total Removed<\/p>\n 2,111<\/p>\n At first glance that looks like somewhat of an achievement: it implies that 2,111 persons \u2013 or 45% of the total deportation orders have been implemented. But the devil, as always, is in the details \u2013 or in this instance in the footnotes.<\/p>\n We are told in Note 1 that Otherwise confirmed deportations is where it has been confirmed a person has left the state following receipt of a deportation order without being escorted.<\/p>\n Oh. That\u2019s just 67 people, and included in the 434 persons deported subtotal which is less than 10% of the total number of orders issued. \u2018Other Removals\u2019 related to criminality and other reasons to be deemed inadmissible and only apply to another 61 persons.<\/p>\n By far the largest proportion of the 2,111 deemed \u2018removed\u2019 \u2013 which remember is actually just 45% of the total number of deportation orders for 2025 \u2013 are actually voluntary.<\/p>\n And then we are told: \u201cThe enforcement of deportation orders is an operational matter for the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB), and my Department works closely with the GNIB to progress arrangements for the removal of people subject to deportation orders. If a person issued with a deportation order does not leave the State independently then they are required to present to the GNIB in accordance with the conditions of their deportation order.\u201d<\/p>\n And, as noted above, because \u201cthere are no routine exit checks at Irish borders, it is not possible to accurately provide the number of people who are currently in Ireland subject to deportation orders.\u201d<\/p>\n The Minister said in the reply that he was informed by An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na that they had reviewed \u201ca large sample of cases of people subject to deportation orders\u201d and \u201ctheir inquiries suggest a very significant number of these individuals have left the State.\u201d<\/p>\n With respect, given what the data dragged out of your Department by Carol Nolan shows, we\u2019d need more information than that vague reassurance, Minister.<\/p>\n The fundamental problem with immigration in this country is that the political establishment does not share public\u2019s serious and ever-increasing concern abut the existential threat it now poses to this country.<\/p>\n The pull factors are still ridiculous, those coming from safe countries are still being allowed to claim asylum, and \u2013 despite the fact that the failure to do so makes a complete joke of the deportation claims \u2013 no exit checks are being performed. This government is increasingly showing it cannot be trusted to deal with immigration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As with everything to do with immigration into this tiny island, the full picture on deportations always has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[62040,138390,61,60,43,138391],"class_list":["post-288492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-asylum","tag-deportation-trust","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-no-exit-checks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}