Draconian asylum and immigration system needs reform, Mr Shatter

JUSTICE Minister Alan Shatter has rightly decried the “inconvenient truth” that the State’s doors “were kept firmly closed to German Jewish families trying to flee from persecution and death” during the Holocaust.

However, maybe he should ask himself if the State would be any more welcoming if the same desperate refugees were fleeing here today?

Speaking in advance of National Holocaust Memorial Day on Sunday, Mr Shatter pointed out that in the 1930s, “practically all visa requests from German Jews were refused by the Irish authorities” and, following the war, “only an indefensibly small number who survived the concentration camps were allowed to settle permanently in Ireland whilst entry and permanent residence was refused to many more”.