Numbers refused entry to State at Dublin airport without travel documents declines by 30%

ireland
Numbers Refused Entry To State At Dublin Airport Without Travel Documents Declines By 30%
The decline follows the then Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, last August imposing higher fines on airlines and ferry companies that allow someone to board or disembark without proper documentation. Photo: PA
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Gordon Deegan

The numbers of those refused entry to the State at Dublin airport last year due to having no travel documents declined by 30 per cent to 2,293.

New Department of Justice figures show that the 2,293 refused entry by front-line immigration officials at Dublin airport last year compares to 3,287 refused for having no travel documents in 2023 - a decline of 994.

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The decline follows the then Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, last August imposing higher fines on airlines and ferry companies that allow someone to board or disembark without proper documentation.

The Ministerial order increasing the maximum fines from €3,000 to €5,000 was a way of preventing the practice whereby some people destroy or dispose of travel documents as part of efforts to claim asylum.

At the time, Minister McEntee said: "There is a legal obligation on our airlines and on our ferries to make sure that any individual that boards our planes or boats that they have the correct and proper documentation where that doesn't occur, we need to make sure that there are very clear penalties and fines.”

In a written Dáil reply to a question placed by Carol Nolan TD, Dept of Justice figures show that the total numbers refused entry to the State at Dublin in 2024 amounted to 5,255.

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The 5,255 refused entry last year is a 10 per cent decline on the 5,826 who were refused entry at Dublin in 2023.

The figures show that while the numbers refused entry due to having no travel documents dropped, the numbers refused entry due to ‘false documents+importers’ increased by 23.5pc from 872 to 1,077 which is part of the 5,255 total.

The Department figures show that 2022 recorded the peak number of recent years for those refused entry to the State when 7,662 were refused entry that included 4,968 refused due to having no travel documentation.

The numbers refused declined in 2024 despite the overall number of passengers arriving into Dublin airport last year increasing by 4pc from 16.62m to 17.3m.

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The Border Management Unit (BMU) of the Department of Justice is responsible for frontline Immigration at Dublin Airport only while other airports and other ports of entry are the responsibility of the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB).

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The decline in those being refused entry without travel documentation follows the Dept of Justice and the GNIB working closely with airlines on a range of measures to ensure that passengers have such documentation when boarding.

This includes delivering in-person training to relevant airline ground-handling staff on immigration requirements and false travel documentation.

In addition, BMU and GNIB also have an ongoing intelligence-led programme of operations at airplanes to detect passengers who destroyed documents inflight and to identify the point of embarkation of undocumented passengers.

Last year in 2024, the BMU carried out over 7,300 doorstep operations at Dublin Airport.

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