A house in disorder
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IT SEEMS the Government took a very expensive sledgehammer when it tried to curb marriages of convenience designed to circumvent Irish immigration regulations. The European Court of Justice has ruled that Irish laws, which require a spouse from outside the EU to have lived in another member state, are incompatible with a directive on free movement of EU citizens.
Interestingly, Germany, Britain, Italy and Denmark, all made submissions in support of the Irish position. The problems raised by sham marriages are not solely an Irish concern. Nevertheless the vast sums of taxpayers' money spent fighting legal challenges, coupled with the insistence on signed confidentiality clauses in the event of a settlement, smacks of a heavy hand wielded in panic.
One lawyer who represents immigrants said that those affected should receive an apology, but are unlikely to get it. In an unconnected immigration case, one woman has, in fact, won a grovelling apology from the minister.
Her husband and three young children languished in an Ethiopian refugee camp for three years despite visas having been issued for them to come and live in Ireland. The minister blamed "a profound systems failure", as though the department's telephone network had crashed, or its electronic files had been accidentally wiped.
No, some person or persons failed to act on the woman's numerous enquiries as to what was going on.
Will the public ever learn the identities of these ghostly civil servants? Will they be held to account for that family's three lost years?
No and no.
