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Sat 07 Jul 2008More than a systems failure
THREE YEARS after the Department of Justice decided that a Somali woman with refugee status was entitled to be joined here by her husband and three young children, counsel for Minister Dermot Ahern yesterday offered an apology in the High Court for never having told the family as much.
For three years the woman's family lived in an Ethiopian refugee camp, and all the while her anxious letters to the department inquiring about their application to be reunited went unanswered. Blaming a "profound systems failure", the Minister did not dispute the woman's version of events and said he had no excuses for what happened.
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