Bureaucracy and foot-dragging is frustrating the operation of an international convention which allows prisoners to return to Ireland to serve their sentences, according to a Catholic Church body.
The Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas has expressed alarm at the falling numbers of prisoners being repatriated under the Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons, which Ireland ratified in 1995.
Last year, only four people were returned to Irish jails under the convention, compared to 10 in 1999 and a high of 35 in 1998.
While some of the decline is linked to the rollout of the peace process, which has seen a number of paramilitary-type prisoners transferred from British jails, the commission says legal delays are causing immense hardship for many prisoners and their families.
It also says the time it takes to process individual cases has increased, from 10 months in 1996 to 32 months last year. Some transfers have taken up to four years to effect, the commission points out. "There has been a huge increase in bureaucracy, leading to lengthy delays. Now that the attention given to the peace process has died down, it is almost as if other prisoners don't matter," Ms Nuala Kelly, co-ordinator of the ICPO, says.
The Department of Justice concedes that the process can be "unavoidably protracted" because of the amount of paperwork invol- ved. It insists, however, that every effort is made to ensure applications are processed as quickly as possible.
The Department says the average amount of time that cases remain in its hands is 18 months. It is examining ways of speeding up the process.
According to Ms Kelly, the convention can make a huge amount of difference to a small number of families, for example in the case of prisoners with sick or elderly parents who are unable to travel to overseas prisons.
Ms Kelly claims the Department is able to process cases far more quickly when the transfer is in the opposite direction, i.e., from Ireland to an overseas jurisdiction. Seven foreign prisoners were returned last year to jails in their home countries.
About 1,200 Irish people are imprisoned overseas, most of them in Britain. But despite falling emigration and developments in the peace process, the commission says its workload is increasing.
A growing feature is the rise in deportations of Irish people who have completed sentences in Britain, the US and other countries.Some have been returned to Ireland even though they have not lived here for decades.
"We recently helped one man who was sent home at the age of 67 after 40 years in the US, and walked into town from the airport.
"Another man was deported to Shannon and only got to Dublin thanks to a whiparound by Aer Lingus staff," Ms Kelly says.
With no money and no friends, many of these people have ended up in hostels for the homeless.
