Why is the Government targeting refugee families?

Since 2022, just 2,530 immediate family members have been allowed to come to Ireland through international protection family reunification

When legal routes are delayed or blocked, families do not stop trying to reunite. They look for other ways, including irregular and dangerous journeys. People are injured, drowned, trafficked, exploited or killed on these routes. These are the predictable consequences of closing off safe and legal pathways.

The Government is preparing legislation that would impose a three-year ban on family reunification for people granted refugee status, followed by a requirement they demonstrate financial self-sufficiency. 

Justice minister Jim O'Callaghan has framed this as a necessary tightening of the system and as bringing Ireland into line with European counterparts. Both claims deserve closer examination, because neither stands up particularly well.

Under Irish law, a declaration of refugee status reflects a formal finding that a person has a well-founded fear of persecution and cannot safely return to their country. Persecution is defined as serious harm, including violence, imprisonment, torture, or threats to life. 

It is a high threshold, reached only after a detailed assessment of the person’s claim. Currently, an adult refugee has a 12-month window in which to submit a family reunification application, limited to a spouse and minor children. Any application made outside that 12-month period is subject to financial requirements.

The proposed legislation would significantly alter what refugee status entitles a person to in practice. Family reunification with a spouse or children would be delayed for years and made conditional on meeting financial requirements. 

These changes fail to recognise that immediate family members of a refugee may face the same danger because they share the same identity or are perceived as associated with the person who has fled. In many contexts, spouses and children are exposed to harm, intimidation, or retaliation precisely because of that relationship. 

The effect of these changes would be to draw a line through families: safety for the person who made it to Ireland, and prolonged risk for those they were forced to leave behind.

Family separation is lived in moments of acute fear and uncertainty. Some years ago, a young Syrian man came to our office seeking help to apply for family reunification. He’d had to leave his pregnant wife behind in Syria when he fled because it was not safe for her to attempt the journey. 

On the day we were due to submit further documents to the Department of Justice, he arrived looking unwell. He had been speaking to his wife when he heard an explosion in the background and then the line went dead. He tried calling back repeatedly but could not get through; phone coverage in the town was down. 

News reports later confirmed the area was under bombardment. He sat in my office holding the paperwork, with no way of knowing whether his wife and baby daughter were alive. It took more than 24 hours before a message finally came through to say they had survived. That moment played out in one office, but it reflects a reality faced by many refugee families waiting to be reunited.

Delay putting children in jeopardy

For families already living with danger, delay is itself a form of risk. It places children in particular jeopardy, either by leaving them in dangerous situations abroad or by forcing families to consider unsafe journeys. 

As the poet Warsan Shire wrote: “No one puts their child on a boat unless the water is safer than the land.” 

Safe and legal family reunification exists precisely to prevent families being forced into those choices. When legal routes are delayed or blocked, families do not stop trying to reunite. They look for other ways, including irregular and dangerous journeys. People are injured, drowned, trafficked, exploited or killed on these routes. These are the predictable consequences of closing off safe and legal pathways.

If the aim of this proposal is a reduction in overall migration numbers, it is difficult to see why refugee families are the chosen target. The numbers involved are small. Since 2022, a total of 2,530 immediate family members have been granted permission to come to Ireland through international protection family reunification. The average family size granted is 2.5 people, and the vast majority of those granted permission were children under the age of 18 joining a parent already living here.

These figures raise an obvious question: why is such a small group being singled out for such a severe restriction? There is no evidence refugee family reunification is driving asylum applications, or that the hundreds of family members granted reunification each year are overwhelming public services or undermining confidence in the system. A blanket three-year delay is a blunt response to a problem that has not been clearly identified.

Misleading claim

The claim this proposal would align Ireland with our European counterparts is also misleading. The EU’s own asylum agency reports wide divergence between countries in how family reunification for refugees is regulated, with no common waiting period and no uniform approach. 

In many states, refugees are explicitly exempted from income requirements or waiting times that apply to other migrants, reflecting an understanding that family reunification supports integration and stability after flight. 

Where restrictions have been introduced, they are often shorter, apply to beneficiaries of subsidiary protection rather than refugees, or include humanitarian exemptions. The agency also notes family reunification remains one of the few safe and legal pathways available to people affected by conflict and persecution. 

Against that backdrop, a mandatory three-year ban on applications for spouses and children of recognised refugees would place Ireland among the more restrictive approaches under consideration across the EU, rather than aligning it with a shared European standard. 

Such a restrictive approach also raises serious questions about compatibility with protections for family life under both the Irish Constitution and European law.

There is another deep contradiction in these proposals. The language used to justify these changes is about protecting the asylum system for those who genuinely need it. But the effect of the proposal is to target people whose need for protection has already been accepted, and to prolong their separation from their families. 

That sits uneasily with repeated claims the system is intended to be firm but fair. Prolonged family separation also undermines integration outcomes once people are here. It is harder to settle into work, education or community life when a spouse or child is living in danger abroad. 

Children who eventually arrive after years of separation do so having already experienced prolonged instability. Policies that delay reunification do not promote integration; they make it harder, slower and more fragile.

If the Government believes this approach is justified, it should be prepared to set out clearly what problem it is solving, and why prolonging family separation for people already recognised as refugees is proportionate and fair. At present, it is hard to see why this is where the Government has chosen to draw a line.

• Fiona Hurley is chief executive of Nasc, the Migrant and Refugee Rights Centre