Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 14 October 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration
General Scheme of the International Protection Bill 2025: Discussion
2:00 am
Ms Lorna Kavanagh:
Did not, but was brought in by somebody who was not their parent. That child is now in our care.
The reason for the increase is obviously the war and the situation in Afghanistan following the fall of Kabul. Obviously, the situation in Somalia is dire. We also see secondary movement. We would see children arriving when there have been legislative changes in other member states. For example, Sweden made some changes to its legislation, after which we saw an increase in arrivals of Somali children from Sweden. There can be multiple geopolitical reasons that cause young people to arrive, but some of it can be down to legislative changes in other European countries. We suspect that the Rwanda Act, when that was on the table in the UK, saw many young people routing through Ireland. Ireland was a transit country to the UK and that impacted on numbers as well.
No comments