A group of young GAA players from Palestine have been refused visas to visit Ireland this month.
GAA Palestine, which had planned to host 33 children and young people from Palestine, said it was “deeply disappointed” with the refusal decision and would “immediately” appeal.
“Our Irish visa applications for the GAA Palestine summer tour has been refused by the Irish immigration service,” the organisation said in a statement on Instagram on Wednesday.
“Our hearts right now are with the 33 young hurlers and 14 mentors who are so looking forward to being welcomed to Ireland next week. Against all odds we’re doing all we can to make this tour happen. We’re not giving up hope.”
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The group, who are members of the Ramallah-based Moataz Sarsour GAA club, had been due to arrive on July 18th. They would have needed their visas by July 14th at the latest to begin the journey out of the West Bank to Ireland.
A GAA Palestine spokeswoman said the visa section of the Department of Justice said in a refusal letter that insufficient documentation had been submitted with the applications to the Irish embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, in early May.
She questioned why it took until less than a week before they needed the visas to inform them of this.
She said any outstanding documentation requested was provided and said any further documentation could have been provided.
“We are heartbroken at this,” she said.
Another group of children and young people from the Palestinian West Bank, also scheduled to visit Ireland this month, have had to cancel their visit due to prolonged delays in decisions on their visa applications.
More than 40 dancers and musicians from the Lajee Center in Bethlehem had been due to arrive on July 20th, but this has now been postponed.
Orla O’Neill, a member of group helping organise venues and activities for the Lajee Center group, said the planned July visit has been postponed. They hope the group can come in late August if visas come through.
“This is the third time the Lajee musicians will visit Ireland. They came in 2014 and 2022 and there was never any issue getting visas,” Ms O’Neill said.
“Then they were issued in a few weeks with no issue. It really does appear there is something new going on in the background that there are these delays for Palestinians getting visas.”
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Lajee director Mohammed Alazraq, from Bethlehem, said: “This problem with the visa process ... has never happened to us. Since beginning of May we have submitted visa applications and we have sent passports [to the Irish Embassy in Tel Aviv].
“We are now ... almost two months [on] and we don’t hear anything. We always trying to call them, sending emails and they kept responding [that] they are still working on that.
“We really are disappointed. The children are really upset. They are preparing themselves to leave Palestine [for the trip]. Now we are going to delay and schedule the trip again until we hear back from the Embassy. In the end, we don’t know when that will be.”
Stephen Redmond, chairman of GAA Palestine, said the group faced losing more than €30,000 as the visa applications required him to provide proof of payment for coaches from Ramallah to Amman, Jordan, and return flights from Amman to Cairo in Egypt to Dublin.
“We will lose all of that ... We couldn’t get insurance,” he said. “We have done everything as asked. These children are living in a daily horror film, in continuous trauma. The hope of coming to Ireland has given them purpose this past year.”
Echoing Ms O’Neill’s concerns, he said there “seems to be [an] agenda to stop Palestinians coming to Ireland”.
A spokesman for the Department of Justice said it operated “a rule-based visa system” with each application “decided on its own merits”.
“Verifying an application is an important part of our immigration system and the checks involved can take time to complete,” he said.
“It is important to note that when minors are seeking to travel to Ireland, a visa officer must be satisfied that the children are travelling in the company of their parents or an appropriate guardian.
“Documents such as birth certificates and consent letters are regularly requested to establish the relationship between a child and the adult they are travelling with.”
