There has been significant surge in the number of Irish people being deported from countries abroad, Government officials have told Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee.
Briefing documents drawn up for the Minister on her appointment in November by the Department of Foreign Affairs, which were published on Monday, maintain the number of deportations were up by 272 per cent compared with 2024.
Department officials told the Minister that as of November, “deportations from the USA account for 60 per cent of all deportations cases recorded thus far in 2025″.
The documents do not set out total numbers of Irish people deported from countries overseas. The material also says that consular officials working with Irish nationals experiencing difficulties abroad had “in terms of emerging trends ... noted a marked uptick in cases involving mental health. These can present in a number of ways - for example, as missing people, arrests or welfare cases.”
READ MORE
Officials also told the Minister that “most” of the €100 million in bilateral funding for non-military lethal military assistance to Ukraine outside of the European Peace Facility, which the Government authorised in March last year, had “been used to provide non-lethal elements of air defence”.
The documents say that Ireland is a strong supporter of Ukraine becoming a member of the European Union.
“We welcomed the opening of accession negotiations in June 2024 and intend to focus on advancing it under our EU presidency in 2026.”
Ms McEntee was told by officials that membership of the United Nations, support for multilateralism and commitment to the international legal order were at the heart of the State’s foreign policy.
Officials said Ireland was concerned by the prevailing threats to multilateralism and the effective working of the United Nations.
“These threats include Russian obstructionism.”
The briefing documents also say that in recent years “there has been an increasing pushback against gender equality, sexual and reproductive health and rights and LGBTQI+ rights by both states and conservative civil society groups. As a result ... decades of progress in mainstreaming gender perspectives across UN policy and programmes is at risk of unravelling.”
The published briefing documents are heavily redacted but give some indications of the official view in Dublin towards several countries worldwide.
The documents characterise elections in Belarus as “fraudulent”.
“The human rights situation in Belarus deteriorated further following the 2020 elections ... Ireland has good relations with the Belarusian democratic movement in exile, led by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.”
The documents maintain that a referendum and a presidential election in Moldova in 2024 had both been “marred by Russian hybrid interference”.
The briefing material says that political relations between Ireland and the UK “have returned to a positive trajectory since the general election of summer 2024″.
However, the documents say the case of Seán Browne, who was abducted outside a GAA club in Bellaghy, Co Derry, and murdered in 1997 (and in relation to which the State has supported calls for a public inquiry) “remains a continuing point of difference between the Irish and British governments”.
