On Thursday night, members of the Garda National Immigration Bureau carried out Operation Trench 9, the deportation of 31 Georgian men and women – and one child – to their home country.
The deportees, who had all been denied asylum in Ireland, were brought to Dublin Airport in An Garda Síochána vehicles usually used to transport prisoners before being loaded on to a specially chartered aircraft with the name Smartwings.com on the side.
Each member of the group, which gardaí said included one person with significant convictions for theft and fraud offences, was escorted by at least two officers. They were not handcuffed, although gardaí on the flight were equipped to restrain passengers if needed.
The issue did not arise, though. “Most of them seemed happy to go back,” a security source said.
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On Friday morning, Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan posted about the flight on social media, as did Tánaiste Simon Harris, while the Garda uploaded footage of the operation to their Facebook page.
Steps were taken to ensure the safety of those on board, with several medics on the flight as well as a “human rights observer”, the Department of Justice said.
The intended message was clear, however: Ireland is cracking down on illegal immigration.
It was a message underlined by O’Callaghan on the radio later in the morning: “If you’re seeking asylum and you’re not entitled to asylum, don’t come to Ireland.”
Whether dedicated deportation flights are an effective means to address immigration pressures is a matter still up for debate, however.
Thursday’s flight was the first such operation in six years. It took significant resources and manpower to gather the deportees in one place and securely move them to Dublin Airport.
It was also not cheap. The flight alone cost €102,000 – almost €3,200 per head.
The State has had mixed success with hiring aircraft to deport failed asylum seekers in the past.
In some previous cases, planes were chartered only to depart with just a handful of deportees on board. In January 2002, a chartered deportation flight left for Albania with just two people aboard. In February 2004, €50,000 was spent to charter a flight to bring one person back to Gambia.
Some flights were leaving almost empty because people were obtaining last minutes stays on their deportations from the courts, officials complained at the time.
On occasion, the flights did not even reach their destination. In 2010, the government was forced to take back 35 failed asylum seekers being deported to Nigeria after their plane developed engine trouble in Greece.
Writing in this newspaper last year, former minister for justice Michael McDowell said his government had tried deportation flights “with minimal impact 20 years ago”.
He called them “costly, ineffective and liable to last-minute injunctions”.
The number of failed asylum seekers living in Ireland today is significantly larger than it was when McDowell was minister. Deportation flights, even if they are carried out as regularly as planned, will barely make a dent in this figure.
A more effective route is the voluntary return programme, an initiative which essentially pays people to deport themselves. The Department of Justice covers the cost of the flight and, sometimes, provides extra funds to help the person get settled in their native country. The number of people availing of voluntary returns has more than doubled compared to 2023, from 97 to 227.
The chief purpose of the deportation flights, however, is perhaps not to significantly reduce the numbers living in the State without permission, but to underline the message to voters that this Government is cracking down on immigration.
In this regard, videos of people being loaded by gardaí on to aircraft at night are much more potent than statistics showing a rise in people leaving the State voluntarily.
