THE GOVERNMENT has deported fewer than a quarter of the people it targeted for removal from the State over the past decade.
Figures show 3,680 people – the vast majority of whom are failed asylum seekers – have been deported since January 2000. In the same period successive ministers for justice signed some 16,799 deportation orders. The wherabouts of the remaining 13,119 people served with deportation orders is not known. Some have voluntarily returned to their home country, others have fled to other EU states and some live illegally in the State.
Department of Justice statistics released to The Irish Times show the deportation rate increased in the first six months of 2010 with 36.8 per cent of the 353 deportation orders signed being effected – the highest proportion of orders ever acted on by the authorities.
Over the past 2½ years, 174 children have been deported from the State: 32 so far in 2010; 69 in 2009; and 73 in 2008. Children are accompanied by at least one parent when deported.
By far the largest number of deportations involve Nigerians, with 385 people sent back to the west African country since January 2008.
Over the same 2½-year period immigration authorities have deported 33 people to South Africa and 32 people to China. They also deported one person to Iraq and two people to Democratic Republic of Congo.
Closer co-operation between European states through the EU agency Frontex is making it easier and cheaper to deport people. In the first six months of 2010 some 130 deportation orders were effected by immigration authorities at a cost of €377,385. Last year 291 people were deported at a cost of €1.07 million.
The cost varies hugely depending on whether commercial flights can be used or whether a flight must be chartered. The deportation of a Georgian man in March 2009 cost €35,205 while in 2008 a man was returned to Ghana at a cost of €151,900. This man was a violent criminal who had served a prison term for drugs offences. Three attempts to put him on commercial flights had failed due to violent behaviour, say officials.
Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern says it is generally accepted that many people served with a deportation order leave the State but do not inform the immigration authorities, making it impossible to enforce an order.
“Overall the level of evasion, the lodgement of judicial challenges and the likely voluntary departure from the State of persons served with a deportation order would explain why a significant proportion of deportation orders appear not to have been effected,” Mr Ahern said when answering a parliamentary question last month.
Former Fine Gael justice spokesman Denis Naughten TD said yesterday there was no evidence to support Mr Ahern’s assertion that most people evading deportation orders leave the country. “My concern is people are living here illegally, working in the black economy and attempting to gain residence through other means,” he said.