The Department of Foreign Affairs said it stands ready to offer consular assistance to a 77-year-old Irish passport-holder and environmental campaigner, Gaie Delap, who was returned to jail over Christmas in the UK because an electronic monitoring tag small enough to fit her wrist could not be found.
Her brother Mick on Sunday welcomed the news and is to contact the department here to seek such assistance.
Ms Delap, a retired teacher from Montpelier in Bristol, who will turn 78 on January 10th, has family connections to Co Kerry.
She was sentenced to 20 months in jail in August 2024 for her involvement in a Just Stop Oil protest in November 2022 that blocked the M25 motorway near London.
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She was released on November 18th on a home detention curfew. However, a tag could not be fitted to her leg because she is at risk of deep vein thrombosis. It was too large for her wrist, so she was returned to prison in Gloucestershire three days before Christmas.
Members of the Delap family live on Valentia Island, and Ms Delap’s brother, Mick Delap, told Radio Kerry on Friday the family is increasingly concerned at her situation. Due to procedures involved in setting up phone access in this situation, they could not contact Ms Delap over Christmas and only spoke to her late last week.
She is on a number of medications and has a number of medical conditions. “She is worried about whether she can get the medical care she needs. Also, she’s very angry because she knows the normal procedure is [that] a tag is fitted,” Mr Delap said. Fitting a wrist tag is normally done when a foot tag is not suitable.
The family is aware they may be entitled to seek help from the Irish Government given the circumstances, he told Treasa Murphy on the Kerry Today programme.
Because Ms Delap also holds British nationality and is in jail in the UK, it is understood the authorities here may not have been informed of her imprisonment.
“The Department of Foreign Affairs is aware of reports and stands ready to provide consular assistance,” a spokesperson said.
Mr Delap on Sunday said he very much welcomed the statement and would contact the department to seek such assistance.
The family were “simply trying to get the British government to acknowledge there is a solution”, he said.
An electronic tag would normally be available for this situation, he said, adding his sister’s wrist was of a normal size.
“She is an Irish passport-holder. She has great affection for Kerry and visits often,” Mr Delap said.
The ministry of justice in the UK told the BBC last week that if offenders could not be monitored in the community electronically, they would be returned to prison, even if the lack of monitoring was no fault of their own.
Ms Delap was arrested at 6.30pm on December 21st and taken to Eastwood Park Prison in Gloucestershire.
Her case has been raised by Bristol Central MP Carla Denyer, who wrote to the UK’s prisons minister Lord James Timpson and the probation service. She said the authorities were not willing to consider alternatives, such as daily police station check-ins, for Ms Delap.
Ms Delap is a great-niece of Valentia Island marine biologist and botanist Maude Jane Delap (1866-1953), whose work in collecting and identifying marine species is internationally recognised.
Many of her discoveries along the shoreline and the sea at Valentia and south Kerry, along with those of her sister Constance Delap, are in the natural history museum in Dublin.
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