Criminalisation of International Protection Applicants in Ireland

The Bar Council of Ireland and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties are hosting the first in a series of events co-organised by the two organisations, titled ‘Criminalisation of International Protection Applicants in Ireland’.

The event will take place on Wednesday 9 October 2024 in the Gaffney Room within the Distillery Building (145-151 Church Street, Dublin 7), with refreshments in The Sheds afterwards. Registration will begin at 4:15pm, with presentations and a discussion from 4:30pm to- 6pm.

The event is being held as part of ICCL’s work on promoting a rights-based approach to the international protection application process. Speakers will explore the challenges and contradictions currently being experienced by practitioners and international protection applicants, for example, the fact that increasingly applicants without passports are being charged with a criminal offence, even though they have the right to make an application without travel documents.

The purpose of the event is to arm practitioners with tools when advocating for clients in this unique and vulnerable position, and highlight the difficulties that foreign nationals face in custody and within the criminal justice system as a whole. The discussion will also address how Ireland performs relative to our European neighbours in upholding international human rights obligations for international protection applicants and outline the concrete steps that could be taken to improve policy and practice.

Further details, including a full agenda, will follow in the coming weeks.

Host or Publisher Irish Council for Civil Liberties