Minister of Justice Helen McEntee has again failed to provide any details of the studies her Department claims support the estimate that there are 17,000 undocumented people in the country.
Both the Department and Minister have been keen to distance themselves from that figure in recent weeks, saying that the figure is merely an estimate provided by the Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland (MRCI), but the figure has been a key part of the messaging employed by the Minister and her Department in support of their planned amnesty for illegal immigrants.
The figure of 17,000 has often been presented as if it represents a cap on the number of illegal immigrants who will be granted amnesty under the government’s new scheme, but the Department confirmed to Gript last year that it was nothing of the sort.
Gript revealed in August of last year that the Department held no “official data on the number of undocumented people in the State,” but that didn’t stop the Department from continuing to use the figure of 17,000 illegal immigrants. In December the Department claimed that multiple studies backed the figure of 17,000. Under questioning from Gript the Department was unable to give the names of any of those studies, saying they were given to the Department by the MRCI. The MRCI could not recall any details of such studies, and representatives of the MRCI told Gript they could not even recall the names of the studies.
MRCI previously claimed, in 2018, that there were up to 26,000 illegal immigrants in Ireland. No explanation has been provided for the reduction of that estimate to 17,000.
In December of last year Carol Nolan TD submitted a Parliamentary Question (PQ) asked the Minister to provide the names of these reports. The Minister was either unable or unwilling to do so – her response did not contain the names of any such studies. Nolan subsequently submitted a second PQ, asking why the Minister had not provided the names in response to the initial PQ. The response to that PQ is now in and it contains nothing even resembling an answer to the question asked.
Given the inability, or unwillingness, of the Department, the Minister, and the MRCI to provide details of any study which would support the claimed figures, it seems fair to question if the figures being given can be substantiated or stood over in any kind of meaningful fashion.
We did lodge an FOI request, seeking any reports or research held by the Department of Justice on the likely number of illegal immigrants in the country, with the Department in December of last year. Unfortunately, the Department failed to respond to our request in the required timeframe. An appeal has been lodged, but that is not due to come back to us until February. Whilst we cannot say why the Department totally failed to respond to our FOI, as the Department did not respond to a request to clarify why no response was received, it should be noted that the immediate impact of the Department’s decision not to respond in the required time-frame, and to require us to appeal, is that the release of potentially embarrassing documents has been pushed back until after the Amnesty has begun.