More than 30 Polish and Lithuanian nationals have been deported from Ireland \u201con grounds of criminality\u201d, the Department of Justice said.<\/p>\n
Some 34 men \u2013 22 from Poland and 12 from Lithuania \u2013 ranging in age from their mid-20s to mid-60s, were removed from the State in accordance with the Free Movement Directive.<\/p>\n
All those removed had a criminal history in Ireland and received custodial sentences for a range of criminal offences, the Department said.<\/p>\n
Twenty-five people had been serving sentences in prison and nine others were arrested and detained prior to their removal, gardai said.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Re-entry bans of up to 10 years have been applied to prevent their return to Ireland.<\/p>\n
The flight left Dublin Airport on Sunday and landed in Warsaw at around 3:45pm Irish time, before landing in Vilinius at around 5:50pm Irish time.<\/p>\n
Garda personnel, medical staff, interpreters and a human rights observer accompanied the returnees on the flight.<\/p>\n
A total of 88 people have been removed from Ireland so far in 2026 under the Free Movement Directive; in 2025, 56 people were removed from Ireland under the directive.<\/p>\n
\u201cEuropean citizens have the right to freedom of movement,\u201d Justice Minister Jim O\u2019Callaghan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cRestricting this right is not something I take lightly, but there must be consequences for people whose behaviour means they should no longer enjoy this privilege.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will take action if our laws are not upheld. This includes enforcing removal orders for people involved in criminality and for those who pose a danger to society. Today\u2019s operation underpins my commitment in this area.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to acknowledge that the vast majority of Polish and Lithuanian nationals resident in the State respect our laws, and are valuable members of our society.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like to extend my thanks to the members of An Garda Siochana, as well as officials from my department, for their dedicated work in completing this operation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 30 Polish and Lithuanian nationals have been deported from Ireland \u201con grounds of criminality\u201d, the Department…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-465260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465260","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=465260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}