Rushed immigration bill is ‘flawed’

A SENIOR civil servant has conceded controversial new immigration legislation is flawed because of a rush to bring it before the Oireachtas.

Marion Walsh, executive director of the Department of Justice’s new anti-trafficking unit, told a weekend conference that the draft Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill was published before those drafting it considered it finished.

Ms Walsh said because the immigration bill was included in the Government’s programme of legislation there was pressure to bring before the Oireachtas. She told the conference in University College Cork it was published against the wishes of civil servants and they were proved right.

“I understand there have been significant concerns in relation to the bill. But we were under pressure to produce that bill hurriedly and we said if you are insisting on producing it hurriedly, it will not be the bill we want it to be,” she said.

Ms Walsh said as a result there have been more than 700 suggested amendments to the bill, of which 300 came from the Government. It is now be up to the new Justice Minister Dermot Ahern to decide what amendments he will take on board before bringing it back to the Dáil.

She spoke after lobbyists for the immigration and child-protection sectors said that while the bill was broadly positive it did not go far enough to protect the welfare of children trafficked into Ireland and other vulnerable immigrant groups.

Mary Nicholson of the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children said Ireland was deluding itself if it thought the country was not a destination for child trafficking.

She said figures produced last week showed 441 children had gone missing between 2000 and 2007.

Of those, 338 are still missing from the care of the Health Service Executive, including five Kenyan girls who went on a trip together in June 2007 and have not been seen since.

She said with so little known about the many foreign children who go missing after arriving here, international evidence would show a percentage are victims of trafficking.

“These are the children who are incredibly vulnerable and many of whom are going missing inside the first 24 hours of arriving here. And these are only the children we know about,” she said, adding that in addition to legislative changes, the Government should introduce dedicated reception teams for children arriving at the country’s international airports.

The team’s role would include the correct identification of children arriving without their parents, the appointment of a court guardian for these children and rigorous checks to ensure adults travelling with minors are who they say they are.