The former special envoy to the US John Deasy has claimed that Ireland no longer has the necessary contacts \u201cto make things happen when they need to happen\u201d in Washington DC.<\/p>\n
Highlighting the case of Seamus Culleton, Deasy said that such situations are only resolved quickly when they are \u201cpoliticised and publicised\u201d.<\/p>\n
Speaking on RT\u00c9 radio\u2019s News at One, Deasy questioned \u201cwhat kind of representation\u201d Culleton had received from the Irish consulate in Austin Texas over the last five months since he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Boston.<\/p>\n
Culleton, from Glenmore in Co Kilkenny, Mr Culleton was picked up by ICE agents last September and taken to a detention centre in Texas, where he remains.<\/p>\n
The Minister for Foreign Affairs earlier on Tuesday said that Culleton’s case was \u201cbrought to the attention of [the] department before Christmas or late last year”. She said that they had been “providing support and consular assistance to him”.<\/p>\n
“I acknowledge it’s a really distressing situation for him and we want to do everything that we can to support him,” she said.<\/p>\n
Miche\u00e1l Martin said he would like to see Seamus Colleton freed from the ICE facility. He said the issue of the undocumented Irish in the United States has been a concern for quite some time, not just during the current administration.<\/p>\n
Deasy said that \u201clocking up\u201d any Irish citizen in this manner, for this length of time \u201ccan\u2019t be tolerated in any circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
Deasy called for \u201csomeone in the D\u00e1il\u201d to seek \u201ca record of the communications between Seamus Culleton, his family and the Irish Consulate in Austin and in Washington and a record of what they then did or didn’t do in the last five months.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is the critical thing because it can’t be tolerated and you know any Irish citizen should not be left in this kind of a situation for this length of time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think some politicians have understood for some time that we have a problem with representation in Washington and this is just another example of it. We do need professional political operatives with in-depth contacts with Republicans and we don’t have that in Washington.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don’t have the requisite necessary contacts within the Republican Party to make things happen when we need them to happen and that’s a big problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Deasy said the bottom line was that if a relative of his had been locked up like Culleton he would ensure that it got \u201cpolitical quickly\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen these cases pop up it seems to me that the only times there is a result… is when it gets politicised and when it gets publicised. We found that out recently with a couple of well-known cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolitics doesn’t change. It’s about contacts, relationships, it’s about people knowing who’s in power and turning that lever.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of influence and access that we used to have.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former special envoy to the US John Deasy has claimed that Ireland no longer has the necessary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-291306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291306","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=291306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}