Around 28,000 people were refused entry between 2008 and 2016, according to Nasc’s (Irish Immigrant Support Centre) Immigration Detention and Border Control in Ireland report which was launched in Cork on 13 March 2018.
Nasc, the Irish Refugee and Migrant Rights Centre, has called on the Government to bring immigration detention procedures into line with Ireland’s international obligations and, in particular, to ensure that people neither suspected nor convicted of a criminal offence are not kept in prison.
IPRT Executive Director Deirdre Malone, speaking at the event, highlighted the renewed urgency to ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture.
“Ireland signed the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture [OPCAT] in 2007, but over a decade later have yet to ratify it.
“OPCAT introduces a comprehensive system of national and international monitoring of places of detention with a view to preventing all forms of ill-treatment.
“Given the State’s commitment to build a specific immigration detention facility in Dublin Airport, and given the findings in this report, it is ever more urgent that Ireland immediately ratify the OPCAT, to assist the State in preventing ill-treatment in places of detention.”
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