Irish Examiner view: Dignity must be a part of deportations

Gardaí escort deportees up the aircraft steps during Operation Trench, with each individual assigned two personal escorts. gardaí were instructed to treat every person with dignity and respect throughout the process. Picture: Chani Anderson

“Deportation” has never been a very pretty word.

Perhaps it suits the process, which isn’t a very pretty one either. Nonetheless, it can be very easy to say and call for, especially when one doesn’t have to think about what it entails and who it effects, and when many of us encounter clips on social media of America’s ICE seizing people by force of gunpoint and into what might as well be called concentration camps.

Thankfully, the article by Cormac O’Keeffe and accompanying photography by Chani Anderson show that Ireland’s deportation regime is of a higher standard, though that doesn’t soften seeing small children clutching stuffed toys being helped on to a bus so they can be flown to their country of origin — a country which, depending on their age and how long they’ve been here, they may not even know or remember.

And as the report shows, the amount of resources necessary for the system to work is substantial, with more than 100 gardaí and related staff on the deportation flight; the photographs show there are at least two staff members for each individual being sent home.

This was a chartered flight, and not all deportations get the same treatment, largely because individuals have the opportunity to leave Ireland of their own accord.

Given the chance, many would prefer going on our own terms to being shipped out en masse and under guard.

“What we seek to do is act in a professional, decent manner with the highest human rights standards possible,” says Detective Superintendent David Kennedy.

Having an asylum application rejected doesn’t mean the people involved have necessarily done anything wrong, or that they are in some way unsavoury, a reality worth eternally restating in the face of rising anti-immigrant narratives that fixate on asylum seekers generally in some way being responsible for large amounts of heinous crimes. As columnists and opinion writers have pointed out more than once on these pages, the people pushing such narratives are oddly silent when it comes to the crimes carried out by Irish people. Where would we deport those criminals to — Rockall?

Deportation is a necessary part of any immigration and asylum system, though given some of the scenarios asylum seekers are fleeing, it should not be one used with careless abandon. It is good, then, that Ireland’s version, while not perfect, retains human dignity at the heart of it. Would that other, more fractured countries could follow our example.

Talking the talk, walking the walk

There’s walking the walk, and there’s talking the talk, and in Catherine Connolly we do seem very much to have a president capable of doing both, and now especially the latter.

Having already vowed to make Irish the working language of the Áras, she has since said she intends to bring it “in from the edge”. It always seems somewhat disheartening that our native language, having birthed one of the oldest vernacular literatures in Europe, is somewhat removed from the daily life of most people. And yet our island has, in many ways, always been seen as on the edge — some early medieval maps put Ireland and Britain beyond the edge of the known world, the last inhabitable places.

There is a certain rebel spirit to being on the edge, a certain rush of the imagination that may have influenced centuries of artists and writers. But its loss would do incalculable damage to our national psyche, even if we don’t realise it. And it can do harm to reinvigorate it, or rather, work alongside the various literary, music, and media figures who are doing their best to keep the flame alive.

Just as importantly, it is better for all of us that the language, and indeed the Tricolour, be claimed as something progressive and forward-thinking rather than something coopted to the causes of hate.

That said, the pluralism of the republic should also be respected, and we have a great many citizens and residents who, having come from abroad, will likely never learn a word of Irish — at least, unless it’s shown to be something relevant to their lives. As such, Connolly has already been clear that she intends to be a president for all, aspiring to represent those in search of a “new republic”.

And who’s to say that the representatives of a new republic have to be white Irish?

Census 2027

Speaking of things Irish and heritage, it seems a forward step — even if perhaps still behind the curve of where people are — that the next census, in 2027, will include an online form as opposed to pure paper and pen.

It will also be the first time that the census will record where people live normally, as opposed to simply where they happened to be on census night.

It will come a year or so after the release of the 1926 census materials, which will have been digitised and made freely available for anybody at home or abroad trying to track down various branches of their family trees.

As any genealogist can attest, trying to puzzle out scanned handwriting for clues which may or may not pertain to an ancestor — who in turn may, or may not, be where you expect to find them on the night — is a labour of love, to put it mildly.

While all census records are invaluable as snapshots of their eras, which the CSO will deliver with high-quality analysis in spades, the more accessible they are the better for anybody who wants to look back at the Ireland that was.

The 100-year rule will not expire any time soon, due to data privacy concerns, but we can hope that the historians of 2127 will be able to access our 2027 documents with the ease to which they should be entitled.

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