A plea was made to the Minister for Justice on behalf of a Burundian family threatened with expulsion from this State, by Mr Pat Gallagher (Lab), who said they faced persecution on two continents.
Mr Gallagher, urging a debate on refugee policy, complained that, under existing regulations, an applicant's right to stay in this State could be tested without the applicant ever having been interviewed or spoken to by anyone in the Department of Justice. This approach was not within the letter or the spirit of the rules, he insisted. In the case of the Burundian family - who had come to Ireland via Germany - he would appeal to the Minister to exercise his right on humanitarian grounds not to compel this family, in the first instance, to return to Burundi, and, in the second instance, to return to face a neo-Nazi political backlash in Germany.
