Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Is any investigation planned or proposed into the immigrant investor programme? This was otherwise known as the "golden passport" scheme. It closed to new applicants on 15 February this year. Quite a number of concerns have been raised about how it operated, to whom it applied and so on. It was often referred to, as I said, as a golden passport or a passport for investors. What brought about its closure? Was there an investigation, the results of which gave rise to the decision to close the scheme? Is there any plan to investigate the discrepancy in treatment between those who sought citizenship under that programme and the applications for citizenship and family reunification from others? I am thinking in particular of Syrians here in Ireland. I have been contacted by Syrians in Ireland who have close family members in Lebanon. They tell me there is now a real concern about the mass deportation of Syrian refugees back to Syria by the Lebanese armed forces, yet Syrians in Ireland, who are here legally and are seeking to have their relatives join them from Lebanon rather than being returned to Syria and to the brutal regime of Assad, are not getting any success in their pleas for exceptional cases for their family members to be allowed come to Ireland from Lebanon instead. I would like to know the position on the immigrant investor programme but also whether the State can see fit to ensure humanitarian visas be granted, particularly to those Syrian family members who are seeking to come and join families here in Ireland and who are currently facing the awful prospect of being repatriated to the brutal Syrian regime of Assad.

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