In recent years, official discourse in Ireland has become increasingly preoccupied with issues of 'security' and 'control'. The preoccupation has grown often at the cost of protecting the fundamental rights of non-nationals, including in particular asylum seekers. In upholding the constitutionality of the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Bill, the Supreme Court acquiesced in the erosion of fundamental procedural rights. In its concern to protect the State's right to expel or deport 'aliens', it lost sight of its own rich body of jurisprudence - establishing the antecedent nature of fundamental rights, their roots in human person-hood and the christian and democratic nature of the State. Ignoring developments in international human rights and refugee law, the Court returned to a nineteenth-century statist conception of international law, viewing asylum as the prerogative of the Sovereign rather than an individual right to protection. The enactment of the Trafficking Bill has heralded a new era in asylum law and policy in Ireland. The Supreme Court's judgement, taken together with the ruling of the High Court in Camara v. Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, that the Refugee Appeals Authority was a specialist administrative body and one to which curial deference was due, greatly restricts the right of access to the courts and with it, the possibility of reviewing the fairness of procedures applied in the refugee determination process. The introduction of "preventive detention" adds further to the increasing stigmatisation and criminalisation of asylum seekers.

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legislation Ireland immigration policy illegal immigrant