Hanafin raises issue of school deportee ‘snatch squads’ with McDowell

EDUCATION Minister Mary Hanafin has raised concerns with Justice Minister Michael McDowell about children being taken from schools by gardaí to be deported.

She raised the issue after a number of recent incidents in which gardaí entered schools with deportation orders for immigrant students, including seizing a three-year-old boy from a crèche in Kerry.

The practice was criticised by teacher unions at their annual conferences last month, with calls for schools to be treated as sacredly as churches.

Ms Hanafin said yesterday she had spoken about the issue with Mr McDowell who, she said, promised to raise it with gardaí.

“He, like I, would be very concerned that schools would be the centre of young children being taken out for deportation,” she told RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland programme.

“It has obviously an adverse effect on the family themselves but particularly on the rest of the school community and the children,” Ms Hanafin said.

She had promised to raise the issue after describing the actions of some immigration officers as insensitive.

Her comments came after it emerged officers had entered a primary school and crèche in Kerry looking for two Nigerian boys - aged seven and three - who were due to be deported.

The Teachers Union of Ireland annual congress last month passed a motion criticising such actions, with some delegates saying the human rights and dignity of students had failed to be respected.

At his union’s annual congress, Irish National Teachers’ Organisation president Austin Corcoran referred to immigration officials as ‘snatch squads’ and said schools should be given the status of embassies or churches.

Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland general secretary John White told his convention the unannounced entry of gardaí into schools pursuing children of asylum seekers is not the way to implement the law.

The calls for immigration officials to stay away from schools came the week after Mr McDowell’s decision to allow deported Nigerian student Olukunle Elukanlo return to sit his Leaving Cert at Palmerstown Community School in Dublin.