Gardaí urge clampdown on bogus schools
Ireland's top immigration Garda, detective chief superintendent Martin Donnellan, said the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) are currently investigating 15 schools and closed down 10 last year.
"It is significant. It is a problem. There is no question about that and it is something that is going to have to be regulated. There has to be a framework there," he said.
Up to 200,000 non-EU citizens annually are granted visas to attend language schools here. Documented students are also permitted to work up to a maximum of 20 hours during their period of study.
However, since the language school sector is not formally regulated by any Government department, criminals are increasingly taking advantage of the system by setting up bogus schools to supply fake papers to illegal immigrants.
Gardaí and organisations representing legitimate colleges say the whole problem could be solved immediately if private English language colleges were regulated or licensed. But there are no current plans to regulate the sector, according to the Department of Education.
Gardaí are particularly concerned at the involvement of Chinese criminal figures in the schools fraud. Five years ago Chinese language students in Ireland numbered just a few hundred but last year this rose to 30,000.
"They are springing up one after the other and in almost all cases where there are problems there is involvement by Chinese nationals somewhere in the running of those colleges," Det Chief Supt Donnellan said.
"We have some colleges and all they had was a computer, a colour printer and they were producing false letters of attendance. They had no teachers and no facilities whatsoever and the students were quite happy to avail of that service," he said.
One college closed down by GNIB officers was being run by a Chinese director who was also listed as a student in his own school in order to obtain a residence permit.
Another so-called school consisted of nothing but senior infant-type desks.
Under the Department of Education, the Advisory Council for English Language Schools (ACELS) operates a licensing scheme representing 105 English schools in Ireland. However, ACELS membership is not mandatory and there are no plans to make it so.
A Department of Education spokesperson said: "Unfortunately there is no licensing of schools at the moment. Even the schools that are recognised by the ACELS, their admissions policy is a matter for themselves."
But the legitimate English school sector is anxious to see any abuses of the system cleared up since illegality in the industry also reflects negatively on licensed schools, said ACELS chief executive Jim Ferguson.
Mr Ferguson: "If there were mandatory licensing then we could control the system and that is certainly something the industry would look favourably on."
