The Department of Justice has told Gript that they do not have any records relating to the numbers of people who have been deported from the Irish state for reasons of national security.
Gript submitted a Freedom of Information request which asked the Department to supply the numbers for each year since 2000 of persons deported from Ireland due to their having been deemed to present a threat to national security, along with a breakdown of the countries of nationality of the persons deported and the countries to which they were deported to.
In its response the Department stated that it was refusing the request on the grounds that “The records you seek do not exist.”
Our question was prompted by suggestions that quite a number of people have been either denied entry and put on a flight back to their embarkation point, or subsequently deported, on grounds of national security.
Indeed, Tánaiste and leader of Fianna Fáil, Micheál Martin, stated in the Dáil on December 9 2020 that the only deportation orders that would be executed during the Covid period were of persons deemed to “represent a threat to national security.” Presumably then there must be some record of how many, if any, deportations for that reason were carried out?
The Covid period, of course, saw a virtual end to any deportations or indeed most other restrictions on those who managed to reach Ireland during a period in which the entire world was allegedly shut down.
The irony of allowing undocumented individuals about whom nothing was known to land here and stay while citizens were treated like people under house arrest was of course lost on those who believed that such promiscuity was a good idea.
And of course should there have been any hint of jibbering on the part of the state, some of the independents in the Senate took it upon themselves to push a Bill that would ensure that there was a moratorium on deportations. Among the crazier proposals of the Bill sponsored by Alice Mary Higgins and Lynn Ruane in December 2020 and supported by Sinn Féin was that nobody at all be denied leave to land.
Minister McEntee had to oppose the Bill even just for that basic reason, but as with other occasions when the other left liberals proposed something even more crazy than thegovernment was up for, she used the opportunity to brag about her own scheme for an amnesty for illegal immigrants.
That the state wasn’t serious about deporting anyone, anyway was made clear by the statistics which showed that the state had in fact really only continued its regular policy of very rarely enforcing any deportation orders. This can be seen from the fact that while the number of deportations carried out in 2020 did fall to 43 from 155 the previous year – when the state had briefly decided that Georgia and Albania were no longer at war with the Ottoman Empire – there were only 5 carried out in 2021, and 26 last year.
To return to the issue of national security, it would be interesting to know if anyone has been deported on such grounds – and presumably they were given the claims made by Micheál Martin and Helen McEntee in 2020 – and from what countries they originated.
This might be especially of interest given the recent evidence that organised gangs based in Albania but with operatives in Ireland have been at the centre of what appears to be an unprecedented level of cocaine importation and use.
There have also been hints over the past decade or so that Islamic terrorists have incorporated Ireland into their networks. This country has been fortunate to have avoided the terrible atrocities carried out by such people, although we have no way of discerning the motives for some terrible crimes that have been committed here and which are currently sub judice.
There does, however, seem to be a body of opinion within the intelligence community that Ireland is regarded as a logistical rather than an operational base for Islamic extremists. You will have heard little of this I suspect.
In contrast there is a well-funded and relentless hysteria about the “threat of the far right,” in Ireland, of which there has been no evidence of any terrorist threat here from that quarter. Indeed, it rates well down the list of Europol terrorist threats overall, and accounted for just 11 of 305 attacks and arrests over the period from 2018 to 2020 across Europe.
There were 18 arrests for suspicion of involvement in Islamic terrorism in Ireland in 2020, the year the liberal left was demanding that no one be denied leave to land here and that no-one be deported.
The other 6 arrests were in connection with far left activity by groups pathetically styling themselves as successors to the Provisional IRA and whose militias have been known to turn out on counter protests organised by the less courageous elements of the far left and liberal left, in so far as there is any distinction on some issues.
And yet, you seldom if ever hear any of the well-funded and state connected “observers” and monitors of the For Royshwriting articles in the main stream media or appearing on the national broadcaster fretting over this. This is despite the fact that one of the main conduits for this hysteria – the Institute for Strategic Dialogue – is “partnered” with the British Home Office.
Now, if there is one thing you can be certain about the British Home Office and associated intelligence and counter-terrorist agencies from MI5 and MI6 to the SAS and FRU is that they are very interested indeed in left wing pseudo republicanterrorism, no matter how inept it may be.
So perhaps the Institute for Strategic Dialogue is just being diplomatic in not advertising its own interest in said sector of the extremist spectrum?
What is also interesting about the Europol report is that the Islamists of IS and Al Qaeda regarded, and probably still regard, Ireland as a base.
Thus, there were reports of people who have fought with IS having returned to Ireland (p64.)
Obviously, such chaps keep their heads down although having been part of an Islamist uprising, inadvertently of course, never did anyone any harm here among the Shinners and NGOs who went to bat for one of them and provided him with a job.
Elsewhere the Europol report referred to individuals based here who were using both crime and legitimate businesses to channel revenue to Jihadist groups.
“Ireland, for example, reported 17 arrests in 2020 in connection with financing of jihadist terrorism. Several ongoing investigations targeted lone individuals and groups, including male and female suspects with Irish nationality, dual nationalities, and foreign nationalities. They used legal and illegal sources of revenue to generate funds, which were transferred through money service businesses to other countries in Europe, including Turkey, and also to Afghanistan.”
If that is where Ireland fits into their network, facilitated by the ease of access from countries like Algeria that supply the bulk of recruits to the Islamic terrorist networks in other European countries, then it makes sense that they not be doing anything to draw attention to themselves.
This country might consider itself fortunate perhaps that we are regarded as an easy mark from which to organise lethal attacks elsewhere, but that ought to be no cause for boasting.
It would therefore be interesting were the state to be more forthcoming about the threat posed, including how many people have been detained and deported under national security criteria for involvement in Islamic terrorism or fund raising for Islamic terrorism.
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