Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 6 October 2020

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality

General Scheme of the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2020: Engagement with the Minister for Justice

Photo of Barry WardBarry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair and welcome the Minister. There is obviously a considerable body of work to be done in this area. Probably, in this committee we are only touching on a small bit of the legislation involved.

I will raise two issues. The first is in respect of extradition, where that will be based and where the applications will go. I presume, certainly, since 2013, the Department has a vastly increased competence in that regard in relation to the operation of the European arrest warrant framework. I presume, therefore, that any new applications under the 1965 Act or under the Council of Europe protocol will go through the same section, which has experience and competence in that area.

The other small issue I wanted to raise was in relation to the use of the term "non-national", which is varied in the Statute Book in so far as the immigration legislation tends to refer to non-nationals and even aliens going back to 1935. In the 1950s, or certainly by the end of the 1990s, we were changing the word "alien" and using the word "non-national". However, employment permits legislation, specifically the Employment Permits Act 2006, changed the definition that had been used since 2003 or changed the term from "non-national" to "foreign national". I wonder if that is something that the Minister might take on board because it is an important distinction. There is a distinction in law between a non-national and a foreign national. Potentially, a non-national is a stateless person. The use of the term "non-national", in immigration terms, can be misleading.

I also think it is kind of dehumanising to suggest that those people who seek to immigrate to Ireland perhaps do not have their own national status which, more often than not, they do. Will the Minister give consideration to the use of the term “foreign national”, which has been deployed in an employment permits context, rather than "non-national"?

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