Department of Justice spent €80,000 on enforced deportation flights, mostly for individuals involved in “serious criminality”

The Department of Justice spent over €80,000 on flights for the enforced deportation of failed asylum seekers over the past two years.

The expenditure included over €16,000 on a deportation mission to Pakistan, which involved a return leg business class flight from the city of Lahore to Doha in Qatar.

The department said the €80,555 spend on flights covered the deportation of thirteen different people, the majority to either Georgia or Albania.

They also said that the only enforced deportations which took place between the start of 2021 and September of last year were cases involving “serious criminality”.

This stemmed from a decision by the Justice Minister to halt routine deportation operations during the Covid-19 pandemic.