A Brazilian man who had a deportation order wrongly linked to his identity has become an Irish citizen at a ceremony in Kerry today.<\/p>\n
The records of Felipe Silvestre Santos De Morais had been incorrectly merged with those of another person.<\/p>\n
The father-of-three has been lawfully living and working as a software engineer in Ireland since 2016.<\/p>\n
Mr Santos De Morais suspected there was an issue with his application for citizenship when he received a letter to his home in Wexford, revoking a deportation order.<\/p>\n
This led him to send a Freedom of Information request to the Department of Justice which uncovered the error in his records.<\/p>\n
“I could see in my records that there was a form and it said, ‘other names’, and there was a different name, which matched with the name on the deportation order,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Then I realised that my identity was connected to another person in Ireland who was under a deportation order,” he added.<\/p>\n
A deportation order belonging to another individual had been formally processed and transmitted under his identity.<\/p>\n
Mr Santos De Morais received a letter in April this year, directed by the Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan, formally acknowledging the error and confirming that his records had been corrected.<\/p>\n
Today, he became a citizen of Ireland at a ceremony at the Gleneagle in Killarney, along with thousands of others.<\/p>\n