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Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has confirmed that the policy governing Non-EEA Family Reunification, which was last amended in 2016, and which is currently under review, is expected to be brought to conclusion later this year.
The minister was responding to several parliamentary questions on the matter from TD’s including People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy who asked if she has plans to change the family reunion policy in order to ensure that anyone in full-time employment can have their immediate family with them from the start of their life in Ireland.
Meanwhile Fianna Fail TD Robert Troy asked the minister if she is aware of the delay in full-time employees here having their immediate family members join them under the family reunification policy; and what measures she is undertaking to address this delay.
As part of its general guidance the 2016 policy document notes that applications for family reunification will be refused where a party to an application is a threat to public security, public policy or public health. In addition, it says, “family reunification should not be an undue burden on the public purse.”
The policy also states that “while it is not proposed that family reunification determinations should become purely financial assessments the State cannot be regarded as having an obligation to subsidise the family concerned and the sponsor must be seen to fulfil their responsibility to provide for his/her family members if they are to be permitted to come to Ireland.”
This aspect of the 2016 policy was taken up minister McEntee in her reply to the PQs where she advised that while she fully understands “that all people moving to Ireland to live and work would wish to have their family join them, the issues to be examined as part of a family reunification application are complex.”
As such, an important consideration in all family reunification applications, the minister noted, “is the ability of the sponsor to demonstrate a clear capacity to provide for their family member(s) if they are to be granted a permission to come to Ireland.”
The 2016 policy document also highlights how in the wider context of public policy where there are often competing social and particularly economic interests, “the fact that it may be to the benefit of a family with non-EEA family members to reside together in Ireland does not necessarily mean that the correct public policy response is to facilitate this request. In considering applications from family members the Irish National Immigration Service must, of course, establish at the outset that there is a genuine family relationship in existence.”
This was of the key issues that dominated the recent referenda process as Gript’s Gary Kavanagh highlighted in an extensive analysis based on Department of Justice documents provided to Gript under FOI legislation; including documents from the Department’s own Family Reunification Unit.
As Kavanagh observed, those documents clearly showed “that senior officials in the Department of Justice believed that amending Article 41 of the Constitution to include non-marital families, as proposed by the Government in a recent referendum, would undermine, or even outright destroy, the ability of the State to operate an effective immigration system.”
The 2016 policy paper governing Non-EEA Family Reunification can be accessed here:https://www.
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