It is ironic in a week in which the people of Ireland as well as the Irish diaspora world wide celebrated Ireland’s most celebrated immigrant, St. Patrick, that the Department of Justice chose to act in a particularly cruel and callous way in relation to the deportation of a 19 year old student at Pobalscoil Iosolde, Palmerstown, where he was studying for his Leaving Cert.

I want to ask the Minister for Justice what logic is there in a State making relatively generous provision for unaccompanied minors to study? What is the point of allowing someone to proceed to the point where they are ready to sit their Leaving Cert., and then deporting them to a city that they do not know and a place where they have no friends or family and no money at a time that cuts off all possibility of the person proceeding to complete their secondary education?

I think that it would be interesting to know if the Minister for Justice has granted anyone humanitarian leave to stay in recent times, and on what basis.

The situation of the trafficking of unaccompanied minors is without doubt a serious crime and a particular problem for the Department of Justice.

However, in this particular case there is strong evidence that the young man integrated extraordinarily well into his community and into his school. He was working on a part time basis, he was paying for his own room and he had earned the esteem and friendship of teachers and students at Pobalscoil Iosolde, Palmerstown.

It would seem to me that in the circumstances where his father is reported dead and his mother living in another country that deporting him to Nigeria was particularly cruel.

At least if the Minister had allowed him to complete his secondary education, which is an important qualification in Africa, he would have been much better established from the point of view of being able to assist himself economically.

I want to ask the Minister if the Health Services Executive has any concept of a duty of care to this young man. In the normal course of events, if someone is in care up to the age of 18, the Health Services Executive continues to have oversight and to support the individual for a number of additional years after they turn 18.

Surely this case was a good example of where leave to remain might be exercised.
A decision as to who is and is not given leave to remain is the responsibility of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and is expected to be based on certain defined criteria. I believe that this case meets these criteria.

I would like to point out some facts provided by the Irish Refugee Council.

While over 4,000 people were recognised as refugees here in the last 3 years – the largest single number being from Nigeria – the numbers who were given leave to remain are, by any standards, astonishingly low. The fact that a mere 75 former asylum-seekers were successful at this stage last year – the number of people deported was 8 times this – suggests that the ‘bar is set’ at an extremely high level while the basis for the refusal of some particularly strong cases is highly questionable.
Some people who have been here – legally – since the late 1990s are now having their cases closed with a refusal of leave to remain and are then liable to deportation.

It now seems that having a strong case is of little value in itself unless the applicant has been lucky enough to get the backing of a politician with influence, to lobby for leave to remain. If the applicant is Nigerian, even political influence is unlikely to stop a decision being made to refuse leave to remain and deportation is then likely.

In a week when Irish politicians appealed on behalf of the Irish undocumented in the United States, surely the Minister can agree to reconsider the case of this young man.