Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming in. I want to be as quick as I can. I am asking that the Department and the Minister for Justice adopt an urgent, pragmatic, family centred approach to visa applications to reunite the relatives of Irish families, particularly in the context of the increase in global conflict. We have an increasing global diaspora of Irish citizens and so this is going to be a more frequently occurring situation. We saw desperate attempts to get Irish citizens out of Kabul and desperate attempts to get Irish citizens out of Sudan and Khartoum when that country went into free fall. Obviously, we have 40 Irish citizens in the Gaza Strip. We are almost powerless to get them out against the backdrop of the appalling war crimes that are being perpetrated by both sides in that conflict. Emily Hand is being kept as a hostage by Hamas. We are pleading for the lives of Irish citizens.

I wish to raise the case of the Snunu family. This is an extended Irish family who live in Carlow and who have a number of businesses there. They fled persecution in Syria during the civil war there. They got to Turkey and made their way, as so many hundreds of thousands of refugees do, by boat, in little rubber dinghies, and got to Lesbos. They left their sister, Nouralhuda, behind because she did not want to die in the boat with them. They left her behind so one member of the family might live. The family managed to get Irish citizenship. In fact the father of the family, the patriarch, told me that in the refugee camp in Lesbos they were given a choice of different nationalities and they chose Ireland. I asked him why and he said it was because he knew he would get justice and love in this country. His nickname thereafter amongst the Syrians in the refugee camp in Lesbos was Paddy.

That family were in my office last week. After the earthquakes in Türkiye, Nouralhuda, her husband and their three small children - Ahmet, who is seven, Mohamed, who is five and little Rital, who is two - were effectively trafficked to Kuala Lumpur and they are now being held in a detention centre in Kuala Lumpur International Airport. They are crammed into a room and they have separated boys and girls. They are crammed into a room with 30 or 40 people. There is a hole in the ground for them to toilet in. They have no shoes. They have no stimulation. Malaysian authorities say they are going to deport the sister and her three children back to Damascus. If they are deported to Damascus, they will be executed. They will be tortured. The women and children will be raped and they will be executed. That is what is going to happen. That is what is on the line. The only reason we have managed to save their lives is because my assistant is Malaysian-Irish and speaks fluent Malay.When their plight was brought to our attention, my assistant, who is probably watching this, was able to communicate in Malay with the authorities in Malaysia to get a stay on their execution, which is effectively what it would be if they were deported to Damascus. The Malaysian authorities have told us, and I quote from their letter, that the Snunu family have been applying for a visa application to reunite Nouralhuda and her children with the family. The Department of Justice has rejected their application on the basis of misspellings in the passports and a discrepancy with the date of birth. This is a family that crossed the Mediterranean in a rubber dinghy. These are people who have been trafficked. Of course there will be discrepancies in their paperwork. For these tiny, bureaucratic - I do not even have the language to describe it - and capricious reasons, they are rejecting them. They have an appeal in at the moment and the Malaysians tell me:

We reiterate that the family has overstayed in Malaysia and we are yet to deport them.Our next course of action will depend on the result of the visa application from the Department of Justice, Ireland.

They are saying that if this appeal is not dealt with in a timely manner, they will be killed. In the context of us trying to save life in the world and of Ireland being a beacon of hope, can we reunite this family with their Irish family? I urge the Department of Justice to deal with this in a pragmatic, humane and generous manner.