Deportation order must be revoked

Sarah Caulfield had been living in the Finglas area of Dublin with her fiancé Ramazan Cala for 18 months, when they had a daughter earlier this year.

But Ramazan was deported to Albania on St Valentine’s Day, before their child was two weeks’ old.

Sarah travelled to Albania in March and married Ramazan, but the minister for justice has refused to revoke the deportation order, to permit him to return with his Irish wife to this country.

The grounds given for refusing him entry are that he and his wife have not lived together sufficiently long as a married couple.

When the people of this country amended the constitutional provision prohibiting the introduction of any law that would provide for the dissolution of a marriage, the amendment was clearly intended to permit divorce in situations where a marriage had irretrievably broken down.

No one suggested that the state should be permitted to make laws that would effectively dissolve a legitimate marriage for any reason. Yet this is the implication of the Cala case. The bureaucratic insensitivity of this case would be ludicrous, if it were not so serious. Michael McDowell should tackle this issue without delay, before he earns the reputation as our chief clown.