Visa applications for travel to Ireland from Ukraine handled ‘swiftly’, department says

All those who completed applications for visas for travel to Ireland from Ukraine for family reunification purposes were handled in a timely fashion, the Department of Justice has said.

The department was commenting after criticism from an Irish banking executive based in Kyiv who said he had been unable to get a visa for his partner’s 14-year-old son before the airports closed on Thursday morning.

Des O’Maonaigh said comprehensive documents had been lodged but questions had been raised and he accused those handling the process of a lack of urgency, compassion and humanity.

Mr O’Maonaigh said while the visa requirement was lifted on Thursday, the airport and Ukrainian airspace was already closed to civilian traffic. He said his partner, Svetlana, then withdrew the application in order to get her son’s passport back so he might use it to cross a land border into Poland.

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In response, the Department of Justice told The Irish Times “for confidentiality reasons”, it could not discuss individual cases.

But it said “family reunification visas for the family members of Irish nationals have been granted in eight out of eight completed applications made over the days before the invasion”.

It said “prior to the lifting of the visa requirement for Ukraine nationals, the Department of Justice, in co-operation with the Department of Foreign Affairs, was working to ensure that it assisted Irish citizens and their family members in Ukraine speedily and with flexibility. This included applications for non-EEA family members of Irish citizens, which were processed swiftly and humanely, with no backlog of applications.”

The department reiterated its assertion made on Thursday that the lifting of visa requirements between Ukraine and Ireland would support the swift exit of both the Ukrainian family members of Irish citizens, and the family members of people from Ukraine who are resident in Ireland.