Legal challenges and security concerns around travel are adding to a deportation backlog of scores of failed asylum seekers out of the State, The Irish Times has learned.
The issue of delays in deportations has come into focus this week after a 26-year-old was accused of assaulting a young girl in Saggart outside an accommodation centre for asylum seekers last week. He is before the courts and cannot be identified due to the nature of the charge against him.
He was issued with a deportation order last May. It is understood the lack of air access to his home country presented a logistical challenge for gardaí in removing him from the State.
Transporting people to certain countries can take time and be “multifaceted and difficult”, according to the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB), which is responsible for carrying out deportations on behalf of the Government.
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Removing people from the State whose claims for asylum have been rejected is a “complex” process requiring “engagement with international embassies”, a Garda spokeswoman said.
Logistical challenges arise where the State wants to deport people to countries destabilised by civil war, political instability, closed airports and political regimes that do not co-operate.
The number of deportation orders increased by 180 per cent between 2023 and last year, from 857 to 2,403, the Department of Justice said. Of these, less than half – 1,122 people – departed the State through voluntary return and enforced deportations last year.
Up to October 10th, Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan has signed 3,370 deportation orders, while 1,582 people have had their departure confirmed.
Officials can face difficulties trying to enforce the deportation of a person who is receiving long-term medical treatment. In some cases a person subjected to a deportation order has family members who are at an earlier stage in the asylum claim process.
A total of 9,589 applications for asylum were made during the first nine months of 2025, a decrease of almost 40 per cent from the 15,586 made during the same time period last year. People from Nigeria, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Georgia represent the top five nationalities applying for asylum this year.
The Department of Justice has said some 500 people who have received deportation orders are living in housing provided by the International Protection Accommodation Service.
It is understood the 460 residents at the Citywest transit hub, located within the State-owned Citywest site that witnessed violent anti-immigration riots this week, includes men awaiting deportation from the State.
A Department of Justice spokesman said it was “not the case that the transit hub is primarily used to accommodate men with deportation orders”.
The hub also accommodates male asylum seekers, he said. A Garda spokeswoman said Citywest was “not a detention centre”.
When a person receives a formal notification of deportation, they are given a date by which they must leave the State.
If they do not leave the State by this date, they must present at the GNIB, where arrangements are made for their removal from Ireland. It is understood the men in the transit hub are relocated to Citywest at this point in the process.
A person who does not comply with a deportation order can be arrested and detained for up to eight weeks in a prescribed place of detention to ensure their removal from the State, according to the GNIB.
These prescribed places are Mountjoy, Cloverhill and Wheatfield prisons in Dublin, Cork Prison, Limerick Prison and Castlerea Prison in Co Roscommon, as well as all Garda stations.
