MINISTER FOR Justice Dermot Ahern has said the case of a Somali woman whose husband and three children were needlessly left in an Ethiopian refugee camp for three years was an "unfortunate isolated incident caused by human error" in his department.
The family were never told of the department's decision to grant them visas in 2005.
An internal investigation has led to a doubling of staff numbers in the family reunification section, as well as the establishment of a database of applications and a new "early warning system", Mr Ahern told the Dáil yesterday.
As part of the review, all files containing family reunion applications were examined to ensure there were no similar cases.
Replying to Fine Gael's Denis Naughten, Mr Ahern said: ". . . I am satisfied that this case was an unfortunate isolated incident caused by human error and I would like to assure the deputy that the necessary remedial action has been taken to ensure that, insofar as possible, a similar situation will not occur again."
In July, counsel for the Minister apologised before the High Court to the Somali woman over "profound systems failures" which resulted in her family being left in an Ethiopian camp for the last three years. The 30-year-old woman, who fled Somalia in 2003 and secured refugee status here in 2004, had made several unsuccessful efforts over the past three years to find out what was happening to her application for family reunification.
She said the department had failed to reply to several letters from herself and her solicitors and it was only in late 2007, when her solicitors secured her department file under the Freedom of Information Act, that she realised the visas had been issued in August 2005.
Yesterday Mr Ahern explained that, when the decision to grant visas to her immediate family members was made in 2005, "letters were prepared containing details of the decisions but, due to an unfortunate oversight, these letters were not issued, at the time, to the applicant.
"The file was inadvertently filed away and . . . did not come to notice until February 2008 when a Freedom of Information request was received . . .," he added.
Mr Naughten said it "defied logic" that for three years the department received regular correspondence on the case without realising that a decision had already been made.
Pressed by Mr Naughten for a categorical assurance that "someone else is not rotting in a refugee camp in some part of the world" because of the department's failure to communicate a decision, Mr Ahern replied: "It was an unfortunate incident. I am unable to confirm there will not be other cases because I must accept there will be human error and this is the nature of life."
