UN agency signs deal with Irish Red Cross to reunite refugee families in Ireland

The United Nations refugee agency has signed its first agreement with the Irish Red Cross on coordination between the two agencies to better help with reunification of refugee families in Ireland.

“For us, the Red Cross, with its humanitarian mandate and tracing activities, is a natural partner in the endeavour to reunite families,” said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Representative in Ireland, Manuel Jordao.

“We hope in future that the Irish Government will not only generously grant family reunification, but also contribute some of the cost to assist families that cannot afford flight tickets, a task that currently falls to UNHCR.”

In 2006, there were applications for 1,350 family reunions, of which over 360 were eventually granted visas to join family in Ireland. UNHCR contributed over $15,000 towards helping refugees reunite in Ireland in 2005.

The Secretary-General of the Irish Red Cross, Carmel Dunne, also hailed the partnership with UNHCR as important, saying that the Red Cross has an key role to play with the changing demographic profile of Irish society and that “family reunification complements our organisation’s existing range of activities.”

In recent years, the processing of family reunification cases has been considerably slow in Ireland, due to the high number of asylum applications that place demands on the national immigration and asylum systems.

However, recent decreases in the number of people seeking asylum in Ireland, together with the establishment of the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service, have allowed the authorities to prioritize the re-distribution of staff resources in the area with the aim of reducing processing delays.

“Ireland has made a considerable effort to create an asylum system that is both practical and protection-oriented,” said Mr. Jordao.