Pa Daly
Question:99. Deputy Pa Daly asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs the number of emergency repatriations carried out since March 2020 by his Department. [28297/20]
View answerTuesday, 6 October 2020
Questions (99)
Oral answers (7 contributions)
I pay tribute to the consular staff and the staff in the embassies who have helped in emergency repatriations carried out this year. While thousands have come home in this manner, many other Irish citizens have made their own way home without consular assistance. We met recently with the Crosscare Migrant Project, which does tremendous work with returning migrants. However, it is what awaits them when they come home that is often the problem.
I advise the Deputy that my Department advised or assisted more than 8,000 people to return safely to Ireland as part of our consular response to the Covid-19 crisis. The priority was to help those normally resident in Ireland to return home safely on commercial flights where possible and, where not possible, on flights chartered by the EU and other partners. The challenges to these efforts, including the closure of borders, airports and airspace, and the suspension of many services were significant and the scale of these repatriation efforts were unprecedented in recent times.
In three exceptional cases where there were significant groups of Irish citizens with no alternative options to get out and in circumstances that made them particularly vulnerable, we chartered planes ourselves. In this way, we repatriated 93 citizens from Peru on 29 March, 68 citizens from India on 4 April and 95 from Nigeria on 11 May. These flights were arranged in close co-operation with partners also facilitating the repatriation of citizens from other EU and European Economic Area, EEA, member states as well as British citizens and were supported through the EU Union Civil Protection Mechanism. This is the first time that Ireland has arranged flights using this mechanism.
I pay tribute to my Department and the consular team, which I do not often get a chance to do, which did heroic work during this period. We ended up setting up our own call centre. At times we were almost like a call centre for airlines. We had people telephoning us night and day from all over the world, trying to get assistance and advice and co-ordinating with airlines to try to do that. A huge number of people were assisted and got home much sooner than they otherwise might have been able to.
Does the Minister have a breakdown as to how many people were given financial assistance or flights as opposed to those who were given solely advice?
I have dealt with Safe Home Ireland, which works with older Irish emigrants in London and all over Britain. Many migrants who have returned home to Ireland find that once they are here, they experience problems accessing social welfare, dealing with the HSE and dealing with local authorities. There is inconsistency between many county councils and sometimes in the attitude in the local Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. I appreciate this is not the Minister’s area but in speaking with Crosscare, I was told the resuming residence clause and the length of purpose of absence are a problem and that there is an unfair burden of proof in obtaining a whole load of documentation. Given these inconsistencies migrants face when they come home, prior to which the Minister's staff will have done an excellent job in helping them return home, will the Minister consider establishing an Oireachtas subcommittee to deal with this so that we can have an equality between citizens returning to the country?
I think we are mixing two issues here. The repatriation efforts were primarily for people who reside in Ireland and were away. They might have been students, people working away temporarily or people on holidays.
There were a number of people who had been away for quite some time and felt the need to come home for health reasons. I can give the Deputy all the figures and data about where those people came from and what we spent and so on. We generally did not pay for flights, apart obviously from the ones we chartered. Most of the time, people were happy to pay for their own flights to get home, as long as they could get a seat, and we often negotiated with airlines to make sure that the cost for those people to get home was reasonable. There were, of course, some circumstances where people needed financial support from embassies abroad and we gave the flexibility to ambassadors to be able to use their good sense to do that.
On the issue of migrants who had been away for a long time coming home, that is something I would happily talk to the Deputy about when we have a bit more time. We have done a lot of work on some of the issues the Deputy has raised, particularly for people coming home from the US.
Will the Deputy try to stick to the time so that everyone gets in?
I will be brief. Perhaps my question should have been a little more specific but I was not only talking about those who were repatriated due to the situation around Covid-19. Perhaps the Minister and I could have a conversation about these matters. I am aware of some cases of people who have been repatriated very quickly. There are older Irish emigrants, or people who have grown up in Irish families in England, who feel they are discriminated against when they come home, even though they are full Irish citizens, because they do not satisfy the habitual residence condition. They are sometimes waiting five or six months before they are able to access services. Their money is completely depleted and they are not on housing lists. I know of one person whose resources are exhausted and who has had to rely on a GP who gave his time for free and the local Society of St. Vincent de Paul. Perhaps the Minister and I can talk about what can be done to help those emigrants who are returning home.
That is a more general issue, not just linked to Covid-19, although it may obviously have been a particular issue during the Covid crisis when people felt they wanted to come home for family reasons and so on. Deputy Cannon, the previous Minister of State with responsibility for the diaspora, did some good work relating to people coming home from the US to live in Ireland, including the challenges they had around setting up bank accounts, identity issues, driver's licence issues and other practical things that are needed to reintegrate quickly into society. He looked at solutions to each of those barriers and challenges. We could probably apply quite a few of those principles that focused on people coming back to Ireland from the US to people coming from other parts of the world. I will follow up with the Deputy on that, if he likes.
Question No. 100 replied to with Written Answers.