Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 6 May 1998

Vol. 490 No. 5

Adjournment Debate. - Deportation of Burundian Family.

Mr. Higgins

(Mayo): I thank you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, for choosing this important matter for the Adjournment. I am sorry the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy O'Donoghue, is not here because he is the final judge, jury and court of appeal in this case. Only he can decide whether the deportation order in respect of this couple is invoked or rescinded.

This evening we are putting to the test the seriousness of Ireland's claim as a country with a deep sense of humanitarian concern. The decision whether to implement the deportation order of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform in respect of Mr. Joseph Nitendereza, his wife and three children is an acid test of whether rigid cold bureaucracy on the one hand, or discretion and compassion on the other, are more important to us as a nation. Tonight we will make history for the wrong reason if the Minister decides that this Burundian family must leave the State. Up to now we have deported Muldovans, Romanians, Cubans and Russians, but they were all single people. This will be the first occasion that a family has been deported. I ask the Minister to listen to the pleas of Amnesty International, the UNHCR, the family and this House.

This family is in an impossible position. It left Burundi in 1995 to get away from a civil war which claimed 150,000 lives, including that of Joseph's brother. Both parents have lost close relatives, neighbours and friends. Their home was shelled and the two older children were traumatised as a result of witnessing neighbours and their children slaughtered in the streets.

In 1995 they fled to Germany in the belief that their professional qualifications would enable them to integrate easily into German society. Unfortunately, their experience in their new home village near Frankfurt was far from pleasant. According to them, they were wrongly accused of various acts. They had to suffer taunts and racial slurs and they maintain they were threatened with a Lübeck — the fate of ten asylum seekers who died in a fire bomb attack on a hostel in Lübeck. All the family wanted was calm, normality and a peaceful environment in which to live.

The family has been living in Blackrock since it came to Ireland last December. These are serious people of high calibre who would be an asset to any community. Joseph has an economics and marketing degree and ten years experience as head of marketing in a large brewing company. In addition to several African languages, he speaks fluent French, German and English. Carinie, his wife, is a trained secretary who was promoted to an administrative post in an insurance company where she was employed prior to leaving Burundi. She also speaks French and German fluently and her progress in English, which she has been studying since she arrived in this country, is impressive. Lionel is eight and a half years old and Andrea is five and a half. Both are attending Carysfort Primary School and are making good progress. The boy has joined the local football club which his father now coaches. Apart from the humanitarian aspect, how could anyone not realise that these are talented people whose abilities would be a major asset to this or any country?

The deportation order is based on the Dublin Convention. However, there are no direct flights from Burundi to Ireland with the result that anyone seeking Ireland as a destination must come via another country. I appreciate that the convention stipulates that applications for asylum must be heard in the first EU state in which the applicant sets foot. However, I ask the Minister to examine the comments by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr. Peter Van Der Vaart, that "Ireland should not implement the convention in a rigid way by returning every asylum seeker who has come from Europe".

I ask the Minister to use his discretion to enable this family to stay here rather than face the unpalatable experience which was their lot for two years in Germany or the horror of being sent back once more to their native Burundi.

Mr. Gilmore

I join Deputy Jim Higgins in appealing to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform not to implement a deportation order in the case of this family and to permit it to remain in this country where it can make a valuable contribution to our society and economic life. The Minister has the discretion to make the decision not to proceed with deporting this family.

The family is currently living in Blackrock in my constituency. I have met it and discussed the situation. The family consists of a mother and father, who are highly qualified, and their three young children, the two oldest of whom are attending Carsyfort Primary School. The principal of that school has written in support of the application to stay in this country and of the appeal the family made to the Minister.

Why is this family here? Most people in this country are familiar with the horrific civil war and savagery in Burundi. The terms Hutu and Tutsi are synonyms now for civil war savagery. This family is a victim of that savagery. The reason it had to leave Burundi was that both parents were involved in a political movement which was known as Parena whose purpose was to try to achieve reconciliation between the warring tribes in Burundi.

Given our experience here and the exercise we are going through, we should have a great deal of sympathy for that process. As a result of their involvement in that political movement they fell foul of the Tutsi and Hutu factions in their country. They felt their lives were at risk, a fear quite justified having regard to the fact that Joseph's brother was put to death in l994.

The family moved to Germany because Mr. Nitendereza has business contacts there and he told me he had previously visited Germany in connection with his work as a senior marketing executive for a brewing company. Unfortunately, their experience in Germany was not good. As Deputy Higgins said, they were subjected to a great deal of racism. There was an incident involving police officers. There was a car accident involving a police officer's car and Mr. Nitendereza believed, as a result of that, he was subjected to particular difficulties in the area in which he was living.

They came to the conclusion they were not safe in Germany and moved to this country. I know the position of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform is that the family should return to Germany for their asylum application to be processed there. The difficulty with that is they are extremely fearful about returning to Germany. If the asylum application is processed in Germany, it will have the effect of uprooting the family from their present situation here with children at school and so on. The Department's position is also based on the belief that they have a legal permit to stay in Germany, which, strictly speaking, they do not have. While in Germany they had a type of tolerated residence, known as duldung. They left Germany for Ireland on 6 September last and their tolerated residence status was due to expire on 12 December. Their position in Germany is quite tenuous, which adds to their fear that once in Germany they will be deported back to Burundi to the situation from which they came.

On humanitarian and compassionate grounds, this is a case where the human values and compassion to which we in this House all subscribe should be applied and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform should act accordingly.

Mr. D. Wallace

On behalf of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, I thank Deputies Higgins and Gilmore for raising this matter thereby enabling me to clarify the Minister's position on a number of points. It is the policy of the Minister not to reveal the personal details of asylum seekers, given that their applications are received and treated in confidence. This protection is provided for in section 19 of the Refugee Act which, while not in force, is respected in spirit. Accordingly, my comments in this debate will, of necessity, be general in nature and confined to the publicly known facts as carried in the media in recent days.

The situation is that the persons involved arrived in this State at the end of last year, after residing for more than two years in Germany, their youngest child having been born there. They applied for asylum here, not being in possession of valid visas for entry.

Their case was processed under the Dublin Convention. That convention is in effect since 1 September 1997 and provides a set of criteria for determining which EU country should deal with an asylum application made in one of them. It does not provide for a substantive examination of the application. The criteria include such matters as whether a country has issued a visa or a residence permit to the applicant, which country was first entered, legally or otherwise, by the person, whether that entry was simply as a transit passenger and whether an asylum application is already being examined in another EU country. The objective of the convention is to prevent a situation where an applicant for asylum could be sent from state to state, with no state accepting responsibility for examining the application, while at the same time aiming to avoid multiple applications for asylum.

The Dublin Convention does not affect the recognition of refugee status, the administrative process for examining requests or the position of the asylum seeker while his or her request is being examined. The convention's starting point is that it guarantees the commitment of member states to honour their obligations under the Geneva Convention.

The Dublin Convention (Implementation) Order 1997, made under section 22 of the Refugee Act, sets out a detailed procedure for making decisions in such cases, giving the applicant proper opportunities to make representations and to be represented in that procedure. Even though the convention does not require it, the order includes a right of appeal against a decision to transfer to another EU state.

In this case, the appointed officer under section 22(4)(a) of the Refugee Act determined that Germany was responsible for dealing with their asylum application. That country had agreed to take the family back for the purpose of dealing with their application. The family then availed of the independent appeals procedure. The appeals officer considered the applicant's grounds of appeal and the decision of the appointed officer and found that the decision of that officer was in conformity with the Dublin Convention.

On this basis it is clear that the family's claim for asylum should be determined in Germany. The state in question is a party to the Geneva Convention and to the 1967 Protocol, as well as to the Dublin Convention. There are no grounds for believing that this or any other family's application for asylum would be dealt with by the German authorities in anything other than the highest international standards. To suggest otherwise would be to cast a slur on the integrity of our European neighbours which under any view would not be sustainable. The Minister is not prepared to acquiesce in any suggestion that general injustice against asylum applicants prevails at the hands of the German authorities.

It would be a matter of grave concern if it was being suggested we could not trust our EU partners to live up to their obligations under the UN Convention. They are, after all, one of the member states of the EU with whom we are proposing to further strengthen our ties under the Amsterdam Treaty.

The convention's starting point is that it guarantees the commitment of member states to honour their obligations under the Geneva Convention which specifically provides against refoulement, that is, it specifically provides that no contracting state, shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his or her life or freedom would be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

It has been suggested that, even where another member state is responsible for processing an asylum application under the Dublin Convention, the Minister may choose to have the claim examined here at his discretion. This is the case. However, I warn if it was felt the Dublin Convention procedure was optional in its application here, it would serve to encourage persons to risk moving their asylum applications from other countries to ours as it suited them. It is important to note that in returning persons to other Dublin Convention countries no evaluation or judgment is being made of the validity of their asylum application one way or the other.

I should also inform the House that court proceedings have been instituted in another case calling into question the validity of the Dublin Convention and the statutory instrument which implements it. The Minister will be strongly defending his position in these proceedings and he is not prepared to suspend the operation of the convention in other cases in the interim. It has also been suggested that it has been the practice not to use the Dublin Convention in the case of applicants from certain countries, including Burundi. On behalf of the Minister, I emphasise this is not the case.

I should emphasise, however, that the file on this case is still being examined in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Minister has not considered the case, nor has he made deportation orders in respect of the family. The views expressed by the Deputies here this evening as well as the other comments expressed on this case will be taken into account by him in making his determination.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 10.30 on Thursday, 7 May l998.