A pause on decisions on asylum claims for Syrian refugees in Ireland will be reviewed within weeks, Ireland’s Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, has said.
Ireland has followed many European countries including the UK, Belgium and Germany in pausing migrant decisions since the fall of the Assad regime.
EU interior ministers will discuss the situation today.
Arriving at the meeting in Brussels this morning, Helen McEntee, said “this is not a long term pause, as far as I’m concerned, but we do need to see how things transpire in the weeks ahead.”
“And obviously we’ll be coming back to it in the weeks ahead to hopefully be able to to move past this.”
One EU official pointed out that a pause on migrant decisions also meant a pause on returns, although the EU has not been returning migrants to Syria for years because it classed the Assad regime as unsafe.
The rebel group which retook the capital, Damascus, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is classed as a terrorism organisation by the EU.
Helen McEntee said EU ministers would try to coordinate their asylum procedures when it comes to Syria.
“It’s important that we do work together and that we work, where possible, in step on this issue.”
But not all EU countries are agreed.
Spain’s Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, has ruled out suspending asylum applications for Syrian citizens.