Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein)
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458. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality if she will provide, in tabular form, the number of persons who were detained prior to their removal from the State on foot of a deportation order; their age, gender and nationality; the length of their detention; and the place of their detention, for the years 2010 to 2014. [11367/15]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I wish to inform the Deputy that the detention of persons in Ireland who are the subject of Deportation Orders is only used in circumstances necessary to effect removal but not as a matter of course.

In enforcing the law in respect of deportations, Ireland is no different to other countries who also remove individuals who have no lawful right to remain within their territory. Ireland, like other EU member states, uses deportation of illegal immigrants and failed asylum seekers as the policy of last resort. The process leading to a deportation is extensive with many avenues of appeal, including judicial review in the High Court, open to persons subject to Deportation Orders. It should also be noted that a Deportation Order requires a person to remove themselves from the State and it is only where they fail to do so that the State is forced to remove them and enforce the rule of law.

I am advised by the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service of my Department that it will not be possible to provide the statistics in the manner requested by the Deputy. Attempting to provide this information would mean matching and cross-matching a large number of data sources in such a way that the veracity and reliability of the resulting statistics could not be guaranteed. In addition, carrying out such an exercise would have a significant impact on the ability of a number of processing units to carry out their day to day work and would divert resources away from the processing of individual cases, which is my priority.