A Romanian family due to be deported on Wednesday will be told that because of the way they were arrested they will have another chance to appeal for permission to remain, Department of Justice sources have said.
Mr Aurel and Mrs Sylvia Costina and their 12-year-old son, Ionus, who have been in Ireland for nearly five years, were arrested by gardai at 6.45 a.m. on Thursday at their home in Clonsilla, Dublin. They were told to pack a bag each because they were going to be deported that afternoon.
They were also told the deportation order applied to their 17-year-old son, Marius, who was staying with relatives at the time. They had received no prior notification of the order.
After four and a half hours in a cell in Store Street Garda station, they were released but were told they would have to leave the country within seven days or they would be deported.
Department of Justice sources said last night that there appeared to have been a breakdown of communications between the Department, the family's solicitor and the family, which meant they had not been informed of the deportation order against them before last Thursday's Garda raid.
Because of this, if they made a new application for leave to remain on humanitarian grounds to the Minister for Justice, describing this breakdown and the Irish education of their two sons, "we would look at it sympathetically," the sources said.
Mrs Sylvia Costina said last night the family was "absolutely delighted at this wonderful news". The Costinas arrived in Ireland and applied for political asylum in January 1994. Since then their two sons have attended Irish schools. In an open letter to the Taoiseach at the weekend, local clergy said the boys are completely integrated into the west Dublin community and Marius is due to sit his Leaving Cert next year.
The Catholic, Church of Ireland, Presbyterian and Methodist clergy also said it was "outrageous that the Costina family should be suddenly arrested without notice in the dark hours of a winter morning, be put behind bars and told that they were being deported forthwith by order of the Department of Justice". It would be "a humane and Christian act not to deport them".
The justice spokespersons of the Labour Party and Democratic Left, Dr Pat Upton and Ms Liz McManus, also expressed concern about the manner in which the family had been arrested and their threatened deportation.