Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy.

I have similar concerns regarding family reunification as I have on the requirement to get permission three months in advance to get married to a foreign national. When somebody has been allowed to stay in Ireland through a visa application process, asylum application process or leave to remain on humanitarian grounds, family unification is a very difficult issue for Government to handle because it has the potential to be abused. However, it also requires more priority than it is getting.

For example, a woman living in Cork came to Ireland from Eritrea and was granted asylum. She has twin daughters now aged 16. They escaped from Eritrea into Sudan following her escape from prison. She has applied to the Department to allow her children to come to Cork to live with her. She provides for them; she does not live off the State. They live with a former family doctor in hiding in Sudan.

We have been working with the UNHCR, the Department and a series of voluntary organisations to try to make this happen. Until Christmas, the Department's official position was that if they have no passports they cannot come. I said they do not have passports. When they went to Sudan they were 13 or 14 and on the run and they never had passports because most children in Eritrea do not. The Department said those were the rules and it could not set a precedent. I asked the Department if it was afraid to set a precedent that when there is strong evidence that these children are who they say they are, their mother is who she says she is, which we have already accepted because we have granted her asylum, we would allow them here although they have no passports. The answer I got was, "Yes, exactly".

I suggested the UNHCR go and see these children, interview them and vouch for who they are, which it did twice, and then return and issue a report for the Department to certify that these children and their mother are who they say they are. The UNHCR did that for the Department, but from fear of setting a precedent the Department said it could not allow that because they do not have acceptable papers to come to Ireland. These were two 15 year old girls living in an attic outside Khartoum.

I am glad the Minister used his discretion to assist in this case. However, the system has no flexibility for compassion in unusual circumstances to reunite families when the Department knows the case is appropriate for solving although the rules and guidelines the Department has laid out for itself will not allow it. That is a good example of where we have fallen down in family reunification.

I have said much about human trafficking in this House on the previous Bill. There is a problem. We grant temporary residency permits to victims of trafficking. That is the right decision and we are required to do it; we do not do it out of warm-heartedness. These permits should not be linked to co-operation with the Garda or successful prosecutions. A person trafficked into Ireland is a victim of exploitation and probably abuse. Unfortunately, this legislation applies only to non-EU nationals; many people trafficked into Ireland and exploited are not illegal immigrants but are entitled to be here.

A trafficked person, regardless of whether an EU national, needs time for recovery and support and assistance from the State. That is not being catered for here. This Bill allows them time to co-operate with the Garda and to be given temporary residency for that time. The reason we did not want trafficking victims to be included in this Bill but dealt with specifically in the trafficking Bill is that trafficking is not about illegal immigration. It may be, but it is not always. Somebody may be trafficked from Bandon to Belmullet and needs the protection of the State after that ordeal. This Bill misses the point on trafficking victims and I ask the Minister to re-examine that.

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