Migrant travelling from UK to Ireland given IPO address and told it was his 'employer'

Pictured Mount Street Lower and surrounding streets after tents were cleared and people moved to different locations around the country yesterday morning.

A migrant was given the address of the International Protection Office (IPO) in Dublin and told it was his new employer by a London-based “agency” that scammed him out of £2,500, the Dáil has heard.

He is now stuck in the asylum system and cannot return to the UK as the “agency” kept his passport. Independent TD for Clare Michael McNamara raised the alleged case of the migrant in the Dáil and said that this man could be one of 30 people who travelled from the UK to Ireland after they were told by an “agency” that they could organise full-time employment for them in Ireland.

Deputy McNamara raised concerns with Taoiseach Simon Harris that several agencies like this could operate in the UK.

“[The issue] concerns a young man from the Indian subcontinent who travelled to the United Kingdom on a valid student visa issued by the UK Government,” he told the Dáil.

“That visa allows him to work for 10 hours a week only. He obviously hoped to work for far more and he went to an agency in the United Kingdom, who told him that they could get him full employment permission in Ireland and arrange travel and a work permit.

“They took £1,500 from him and returned his passport so that he would pay an additional £1,000 when he started work. They arranged his travel to Liverpool and from there, a ferry to Belfast, from where he travelled down to Dublin.

“He was given the Eircode and the postal address of his employer. He turned up there and it was the IPO [International Protection Office] in Dublin. He obviously didn’t know that he was being sent to the IPO.

“He was one of five travelling in a similar way organised by the same agents on the same day. He knows of 30 more people sent to Ireland by that agency in the same way. He’s now in Ireland. He’s trying to get out of the asylum system and return back to the United Kingdom. He doesn’t have his passport.

“It’s very clear that vulnerable people in a precarious position are being horribly exploited by bad actors. But Taoiseach, it’s equally clear that our state is being exploited by those bad actors. While the Punch and Judy show that your government is engaging in with UK authorities is all well and good, I want to know what you can do and what hope there is of international cooperation to resolve this.

“If I know anything of the underworld in which these agents, these people traffickers – let’s call them what they are – operate, that is if there is one agency doing it in London, there are many doing it in London.”

In response to Mr McNamara, the Taoiseach said the allegations raised were “a very serious matter” and that anyone “seeking to exploit Ireland” will be taken “extraordinarily seriously”.

The Irish Mirror has contacted the Department of Justice and the Garda Press office for comment.

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