Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

In many cases they are roughly comparable. However, because they are deemed in Ireland to be minors, they are dealt with differently in that they are taken under the aegis of the HSE. They are clothed and given a different level of accommodation to legally adult asylum seekers, who are accommodated in hostels operated by the RIA. Under 18s are educated and well provided for in general terms. Concerns have been expressed with regard to reuniting them with families and suggestions were made that some 16 and 17 year old non-national girls have been coerced into lives of crime and put at risk. However, these represent a tiny minority in a flow of people.

As regards Deputy Howlin's question about chartering aircraft, the great majority of deportees do not travel on chartered flights. Their fares are paid and the International Organisation for Migration frequently makes arrangements for them. In any case, they are encouraged to leave voluntarily by making their own arrangements. Frequently, people who have been convicted of criminal offences are deported and, in most cases, we do not await a flight before deporting them.

I would prefer to persuade most of the people due for deportation to voluntarily board a flight home but every European country has learned the lesson that it is necessary to uphold the law and put it into effect by compulsory means. Otherwise, people will simply prevaricate and disobey the law.

With regard to aged out minors, we treat the people who come here at the ages of 16 and 17 very generously. They attend secondary education, have different standards of accommodation, receive pocket money and are treated well by the State. The outgoing UN High Commissioner for Refugees praised the Irish system, describing it as one of the best in the EU.

When these people come to full age, there is no presumption that they should stay here if they were not originally entitled to refugee status. I will not go down the road of allowing someone who came here at the age of 16 and who spent two years in secondary education to be treated radically differently from an 18 year old who is sent back in a matter of weeks through an accelerated process. I will not be pushed into making such arbitrary and indefensible discrimination between two categories of asylum seekers.

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