In response to the growing refugee crisis, the Government is to introduce new visa requirements that are to come into effect from noon today, Tuesday.
This follows a decision to suspend the Council of Europe agreement to abolish visas for all refugees, for a period of 12 months.
The current exemption is responsible for the ludicrous situation – as has been highlighted by Gript and very few others – where people who have applied for refugee status in other safe European countries then travel to Ireland and make another application. This type of “window shopping” is a clear abuse of the requirement to apply for protection in the first safe country a refugee arrives to.
According to the press release issued after Monday evening’s Cabinet meeting:
The Government has agreed to the temporary suspension to protect the integrity of the immigration and International Protection systems. The International Protection Office has been receiving applications from some people who already have granted refugee status by other states.
The press release goes on further to state that the International Protection Office here had received notice from the Eurodac database on applicants which revealed that 760 of those who had made applications in Ireland between January 2021 and January 2022 had already been granted protection in another country.
Of those 760 applications, 479 had been granted protection in another EU member state.
Justifying the decision last night, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee said that this is necessary where “there is evidence that there may be abuse” of the systems in place, but more to the point that they have finally recognised that “the visa exemption provided for in the Council of Europe Agreement is being exploited.”
Recently, Minister Roderic O’Gorman told a UN Committee that Ireland has seen a “dramatic” increase in the number of non-Ukrainians arriving in Ireland claiming asylum. As has been discussed on Gript previously, many of those claiming refugee status are coming from safe countries.