Robinson warns of rise in trafficking of people

There will be increasing criminality and trafficking in people unless there is more respect for refugees and better international management of migration, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, has warned.

"All European countries need to think more clearly of how we reduce this huge trafficking in desperate human beings, which is the worst problem," she said.

Mrs Robinson was speaking to reporters after she launched a report in Dublin on human rights advocacy for disabled people.

She was "very shocked" by the deaths of eight Turkish stowaways found in a shipping container in Wexford and "it just brings home that unless we have more respect for those who flee as refugees and asylum-seekers, unless we have better management of migration, we're going to see more and more criminality, more and more trafficking of desperate people".

She added that "it is a big responsibility and I would like to see European Union countries, including Ireland, take that responsibility more seriously. It is one of the key human rights issues at the moment."

Meanwhile, the latest figures on asylum-seekers and refugees in Ireland show that 860 people so far this year have been granted refugee status to stay permanently in the Republic .

A further 2,722 current or former asylum-seekers were granted permission to stay, of whom 2,398 were allowed to stay because of their parentage of a child born in the State, who automatically receives Irish citizenship.

Some 131 were granted permission because of their marriage to an Irish national and 127 because they were married to an EU national.

Suxty-six people were granted temporary leave to remain in the Republic on various other grounds, including humanitarian.

The statistics were released by the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, in a reply to a written parliamentary question from Fine Gael TD Mr Bernard Durkan.

A total of 355 people were deported in the past 12 months, the Minister stated. Of these, 292 were asylum applicants who were refused. In addition 22 people left the State before deportation orders could be enforced and a further 300 people voluntarily returned to their own countries in the past year. Mr O'Donoghue pointed out that nobody who had been recognised as a refugee in the State had been deported in the last 12 months.