Polish people living in Ireland are being extradited back to their native country for offences as minor as possession of €50 worth of cannabis.
More than any other EU country, Poland has established a reputation among Irish officials for overuse of European Arrest Warrant system.
In some cases the extraditions come decades after the offence or alleged offence was committed, and the defendants have since built lives and families in Ireland.
The strict rules of the warrant system mean Irish courts have little leeway in the decision to send these people back in cases where they have already been convicted.
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The use of the warrant for minor offences has been a growing source of frustration for Irish authorities in recent years due to the costs and time involved in processing such cases.
This is separate from concerns about the independence of the Polish judiciary, a matter that has been raised in various Irish and EU courts and which has resulted in the suspension of certain categories of extraditions.
In one recent case, a Polish man was extradited for the offence of possessing 2.8g of cannabis, worth about €50, some 20 years ago when he was 17.
In another case a man was extradited to Poland to serve a sentence relating to a conviction for giving a lift to someone as they engaged in the fraudulent hire purchase of a vacuum cleaner.
“These cases are some of the biggest injustices you see in the [Criminal Courts of Justice] in my view,” said one Irish lawyer.
Earlier this year People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy raised a case involving a woman wanted in Poland for pirating software for her own use and possessing a small amount of amphetamines.
He appealed to Minister for Justice Helen McEntee to suspend the extradition but was told the Minister has no discretion in the matter.
“The Polish authorities are behaving in a very inhumane way in seeking extradition of people for relatively minor crimes which took place many, many years ago,” Mr Murphy told The Irish Times.
“These are people who have moved on and made new lives for themselves in Ireland, now faced with the scary threat of being forcibly returned to Poland.”
Judges, gardaí and state lawyers have also expressed frustration with Poland’s use of the warrant system due to the costs involved for Ireland.
One official pointed to the case of a mother of four who was wanted in Poland over fraudulently obtaining a loan of €2,000-€3,000 more than a decade ago. “She would simply get a suspended sentence for that in Ireland,” the official said.
It can cost up to €7,500 to extradite a person to Poland in a straightforward case. If the extradition is contested it can cost the State up to €70,000 in legal fees, regardless of the severity of the charge, sources say.
Defendants extradited to Poland are repatriated by a Polish military aircraft that regularly travels around Europe collecting such people.
Last year Ireland joined the Schengen Information Sharing system (SIS), which allows for the real-time sharing of information on fugitives across all EU police forces.
This is likely to lead to an increase in extraditions to Poland, including for minor offences, as more such cases are detected here by gardaí.
EU legislation states a convicted person can be extradited as long as the sentence they face is more than four months.
Between 2005 and 2013, Poland was responsible for a third of all such warrants issued in Europe.
Those numbers have declined since but Poland still issues more than every other EU country except Germany, which has double its population.
On average, nine years elapse between the commission of a crime in Poland and the enactment of a European Arrest Warrant, a 2021 study found.
