Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 13 January 2016
475. Deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn asked the Minister for Justice and Equality the number of persons of Iraqi origin or claiming to be of Iraqi origin who were refused leave to land at various points of entry; the reason in each case, by age, by gender, by country to which they were returned, in 2015; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [46682/15]
View answer486. Deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn asked the Minister for Justice and Equality the details of those persons refused leave to land in 2015 from Syria, Eritrea, Iran, and Afghanistan, and as outlined by her in response to previous parliamentary questions raised, how many of the persons were subsequently permitted to enter the State and to claim asylum. [46842/15]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 475 and 486 together.
In my response to my reply to Parliamentary questions 311 to 314 of 15th December last, I outlined details of the numbers refused leave to land from Syria, Eritrea, Iran and Afghanistan. Of these a total of 52 made applications for asylum and were permitted entry to the State for the purposes of making a protection application. In respect of Iraq, a total of 30 persons were refused leave to land in 2015.
As outlined in my previous reply, the further breakdown of data requested by the Deputy is not readily available and would require the search and retrieval of individual records that could only be obtained by the disproportionate expenditure of time and resources relative to the information sought. Also as noted in my reply, these figures may be subject to revision over time where individual cases are examined further and the status of some cases may change.
