The latest twist in the increasingly surreal dispute over where all the mysterious persons claiming asylum in the Irish state are coming from has been supplied by An Tánaiste, Micheál Martin.
Yesterday afternoon, while attending a meeting of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, Martin contradicted Minister for Justice Helen McEntee’s claim that more than 80% of current applicants for International Protection here are arriving into the state across the border with Northern Ireland.
Martin’s disavowal of his own Cabinet colleague represents an unprecedented public spat among Government Ministers – although there have been whispers from within previously directed by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs at Green Party Minister Roderick O’Gorman also on issue of the handling of the thorny subject of immigration.
Having been among the very few who even broached this subject previously, Gript has written about how arrivals into the state of persons who then claim asylum are recorded, or not recorded. We have noted the large numbers of people who have arrived without documentation or with false documentation but allowed to make an application.
We have also noted – and this is key to the current dispute over the numbers – that there has been a significant discrepancy between the numbers who claim International Protection here at point of entry (almost exclusively at Dublin airport and in smaller numbers at Cork and Shannon) and those who do so subsequently by turning up mysteriously at the IPO office at Mount Street in Dublin.
Indeed, a table which was supplied by the Minister in response to a Parliamentary Question in October 2023 showed that 77% of asylum applicants made their application at the IPO in Mount Street in the first nine months of 2023 rather than at an airport or port.
This is very close to Minister McEntee’s claim that 80% are crossing the border to claim asylum.
It would appear that Minister McEntee is indeed correct in stating the majority of persons claiming asylum have entered the state by crossing the border with the north. There is no other route that such substantial numbers might possibly have taken.
Of course, this points, yet again, to the shambolic nature of the country’s immigration system. This pattern – of a majority of people claiming asylum at the IPO office in Mount Street rather than at point of entry – has been obvious for years now.
It never seemed to occur to the authorities to ask the thousands arriving at the IPO how they arrived in the country and to keep a record of the same.
In a statement yesterday evening the Department of Justice stated: “To date in 2024, there have been 6,739 applications for International Protection at the IPO. Of these 6,136 (91%) were made at the IPO for the first time and not at a port of entry.”
“It has long been the case that a significant number of people apply for international protection for the first time in the International Protection Office (IPO),” the statement says.
And it has long been the case that the authorities failed to get a grip on understanding how these asylum applicants entered the country.
There are a number of circumstances in which someone might apply in the IPO without first applying at a port of entry. They may enter at an airport with valid documentation for example but choose not to apply at that time. Or they may apply having been in the State for a period previously, for example on foot of a different permission to remain.
However, the Department’s firm assessment, based on the experience of staff and others working in the field, and based on the material gathered at interviews, is that in most cases those applying for the first time in the IPO have entered over the land border.
This data, and the Department’s assessment, is what the Minister was drawing on in referring to the number of arrivals over the land border.
While they do accept that there are a “number of circumstances” which might explain why a person might not apply at port of entry they are adamant that “the Department’s firm assessment, based on the experience of staff and others working in the field, and based on the material gathered at interviews, is that in most cases those applying for the first time in the IPO have entered over the land border.”
It is these exceptional circumstances that the advocacy NGOs – and it would appear,somewhat oddly, Tánaiste Micheál Martin – have seized upon as a reason why Minister McEntee is wrong. It is the basis of their tenuous claim that most of the applicants are not effectively illegal entrants but poor souls who have legitimately decided to defer their claim to be fleeing from persecution until after further reflection.
Let us examine that claim, shall we? And indeed who is making them, for one of those quoted in contradiction to the Minister and her Department and their official figures is a new kid on the block to me, and one with a rather interesting back story. More of that anon.
Nick Henderson of the Irish Refugee Council claims that someone might not claim asylum at point of entry because they fear that they might be put on a flight back to where they came from. Given that this is almost as rare an occurrence at an Irish airport as an arrival of the Starship Enterprise from a spin around the Orion galaxy, we will not dwell upon it, other than to point out that official figures show that in the first eleven months of 2022 5,074 persons who arrived at Dublin airport with false or no documentation were then allowed to apply for International Protection.
Statistics for the first seven months of 2022 show that of 2,915 people who had arrived with no documentation that 2,232, more than 76%, then applied for asylum. That represented just 29% of the 7,760 persons who applied for International Protection in the first seven months of 2022.
Henderson went on to claim that someone might arrive here legitimately, as a student for example, and only later realise that there might have been a “change in circumstances, like a war in their country” that might persuade them that it was unsafe to return home.
The only example he gave was Gaza. Which is fair enough, there is a war in Gaza and therefore legitimate reasons why someone from Gaza living in Ireland or who has come to Ireland might apply for asylum. The thing is though that Henderson’s example is relatively tiny. Of the IPAS figures on arrivals who have claimed International Protection currently available on their site, less than 5% of the 6,464 claimed to be from Palestine.
What about the countries where most arrivals among the 6,739 (these include the last weekly total not yet on their website) come from? By far the largest numbers of persons currently arriving and claiming International Protection are from Nigeria. Is there a war in Nigeria? No, there is no war in Nigeria.
Another who claims medical students might only later realise they are asylum seekers rather than students or suddenly remember that they are from “a very undemocratic regime” and might be tortured if they go home is Daniel Holder of the Committee on the Administration of Justice.
I had never heard of the chap so I did him the courtesy of doing a quick check. In fairness Daniel should know what an “very undemocratic regime” looks like. How do I know this? Well, because he lived for a spell in Cuba and worked in the University of Havana.
On his Curriculum Vitae we find that Dan worked for the state news agency Prensa Latina, and national broadcaster, ICRT. the ICRT. The ICRT was the Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión. (It has since been renamed and replaced by the state Institute for Information.)
So Danny was working for the Cuban state broadcaster. Just like RTÉ, except that the Irish state is not a one party totalitarian state which has murdered tens of thousands of people and RTÉ is not run by Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael or the Greens in the same way as the ICRT is run and controlled by the Communist Party of Cuba.
Gript firmly believes that you should know these things: know a bit about the people who think, and who our own state broadcaster obviously thinks, ought to be lecturing the elected Minister for Justice on immigration policy and statistics.
Gript.ie journalists and reporter’s.
The one’s that actually looked at the facts.
And report them with no apparent agenda.
I salute you.
There were 13,277 Asylum Applications made in the state in 2023, 35% of these or (4,712 applications) were made at Dublin Airport, so the figure for the North couldn’t be that high !! Its my own view that many of the remaining 65% are coming through dublin airport but are going straight to the internationa protection office in dublin.
Easy way to find out the Truth , Interview the asylum seekers on Mount Street and ask them how they came into the Country.
Where did you get this info?
Good spot. Any more information on the background of Daniel Holder i.e where is he from, where were his parents from? Doesn’t sound like an Irish name.
this is only the legal asylum seekers (people who don’t work and claim asylum benefits). Times has a 50,000 figure for illegal migration (people who work on the black market and hope for another amnesty.) See linked archive article. As Irelands Government don’t count arrivals, I think media should use the UK intelligence provided numbers until the Irish side start providing evidence based numbers. UK certainly does measure.
https://archive.ph/2024.04.27-232117/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/asylum-claims-in-ireland-to-more-than-double-this-year-xl63kf9ws#selection-2787.0-2807.112
I doubt that the UK has a clue as to the number of illegal immigrants there are. Some hapless civil servants from the Home Office were interviewed by a Parliamentary Select Committee last year and they admitted they had no idea where the immigrants were that had been interviewed, or how many of them escaped the net and disappeared into the cities. London is full of ’em sharing rooms on a shift basis, living in sheds, garages and the like. It’s going back to Dickensian standards. Strange when you think that those who remain on the legal side get four star hotels, pocket money, free health treatment etc and if any get involved in criminal activity they are easily excused as being traumatised etc.
Send the Wicklow riot squad thugs to police the border.
Or do they only get their jollies beating Irish people in their own home.
Freemason martin is and always has been a liar and a spoofer who literally did nothing. The reality is that the political parties have all been complicit in these people flying to belfast, down through the border illegally without legal documents and never declaring themselves to border officials and then ramming them into communities with brute force. These figures and the manner in which they were brought in confirms that all parties are complicit in simon coveneys illegal immigrant plantation of ireland and if any one is in any doubt of the plantation of ireland, you can here it from the man himself who said he wanted half the people in every urban area to be illegals. https://www.bitchute.com/video/yvZZNkKJs4vx/
Great piece of journalism and I like the starship enterprise piece!
Can clearly see where the figures come from and how it all stacks up.
Put the army on the boarder! They did it before to stop cows crossing the boarder illegally… why not immigrants?
13,277 Asylum Applications were made in the state in 2023,
https://ipo.gov.ie/en/IPO/20240109%20IPO%20Website%20Statistics%20Report%20Dec%202023%20FINAL.pdf/Files/20240109%20IPO%20Website%20Statistics%20Report%20Dec%202023%20FINAL.pdf
We Know that 35% of these or (4,712 applications) were made at Dublin Airport.
https://www.newstalk.com/news/85-of-asylum-seekers-arrive-at-dublin-airport-without-identity-documents-1646914
The other 65% most likely arrived at Dublin Airport but went to the International Protection Office to make their claim, I’m not saying people aren’t coming down from the North but It cant be as a high as the figures being stated.
A shocking mess.