Department of Justice said charter planes not needed for deportations as they worked on tender to hire aircraft

Officials at the Department of Justice said there was no need for charter planes to deport asylum-­seekers even as they were working on a tender process to hire aircraft for mass removal operations.

In a briefing for Justice Minister ­Helen McEntee the repatriation division of the department said ordinary flights and sometimes help from the Defence Forces were enough to manage deportation from the State.

The note said: “At this time, there is no demand for charter aircraft and the use of commercial aviation and on occasion the Air Corps is sufficient for current needs.”​

The briefing was prepared for Ms McEntee last September with officials saying they were at work on finalising a tender competition to find a commercial partner to conduct larger scale deportation flights in the new year.

That competition was launched on June 17 with the department hoping to have an arrangement in place later this year for the removal of between 20 and 30 failed applicants in a single flight.

However, officials at the repatriation division had said their priority remained “the removal of criminals” and encouraging other migrants to return home of their own volition.

A briefing for Ms McEntee said: “The division is currently working to publicise and expand the take-up of voluntary ­return amongst the migrant population. A return specialist has been recruited to that end.”

It said a new unit had also been set up to bring “greater cohesion” between the department, the gardaí and the providers of accommodation for asylum applicants.

Ms McEntee was told this would lead to “enhanced efficiency in the area of removal and refugee accommodation”.

The minister was also briefed on ­“excellent relations” with Georgia, one of the largest sources of migration to ­Ireland over recent years.

She was told that over a seven-year period deportation orders for 523 Georgians had been signed, 56 had been carried out, and that another 74 people had gone home by themselves.​

The repatriation division said the Georgian authorities had been “unfailingly helpful” at the same time that Ms McEntee was told multiple other countries were being uncooperative due to “pandemic related issues, dysfunctional administrative capacities and outright unwillingness to cooperate”.

The Department of Justice said there had been a sharp increase in the issuing of deportation orders so far this year.

A spokesman said: “A range of actions are being taken to increase the capacity of the system to deal with this.

“Minister McEntee has already announced that 100 gardaí would be freed up for front line immigration enforcement work, including deportations. Completing the tender for a charter plane is also an important step.”

On the discussions with the Georgian government, the department said accelerated processing for applicants from safe countries, including Georgia, had been introduced in November 2022.

“Since then the applications from those designated countries have fallen by 50pc,” added the spokesman.

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