Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

From January 2002 to the end of December 2004, 12 charter flights were engaged for the purpose of deportation of persons illegally residing in the State. A total of 341 persons were deported in this way at a total cost of €1,363,201. Details of these charter flights, that is, dates, destinations, numbers deported — broken down into adults and minors in so far as this information is available — and individual costs are as shown in the table that will be circulated to Members.

The costs include Garda expenses associated with these removal operations. I am advised by the Garda Commissioner that, given the wide range of immigration duties performed by the Garda Síochána and the Garda national immigration bureau, in particular, it is not possible to identify the pay and overtime costs incurred by the Garda on these charter flights. However, the commissioner informs me that charter flights involve a lower ratio of Garda escorts to deportees than is the case using conventional schedule flights, resulting in savings to the Garda budget.

There are two main categories of repatriation charter flights. Smaller charters that are organised to remove disruptive deportees that commercial airlines will not take on account of previous disruptive behaviour on board aircraft and bigger charters organised to return larger numbers of deportees in a more efficient way than using scheduled flights. Ireland does not have direct flights to the destinations where these charters have taken place, for example, Romania and Nigeria. The alternative to chartering is transiting through hub European airports involving longer transfer times, more inconvenience to deportees and the attendant risk of deportees absconding in transit.

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