GAA Palestine officially lodges appeal after all visas for team refused
A GAA Palestine spokesperson told RTÉ News the organisation officially lodged the appeal today, hoping the Department of Justice will now deal with their appeal.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice previously said it will assess the appeal promptly once it is lodged, and it appreciates that the decision to refuse applications might have caused disappointment.
In a statement released yesterday, the GAA Palestine said they are 'profoundly disappointed and outraged by the Department of Justice's refusal to facilitate their upcoming team trip to Ireland scheduled for July 18'.
"Despite our numerous appeals and attempts to engage, the Department has dismissed our concerns and provided an appeals process that guarantees the trip cannot proceed within the timeframe required,' it said.
"The GAA Palestine executive will remain in Dublin and continues to hold the evidence of our application. We are hopeful that in the final 24 hours, a resolution can be found,' it added.
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Claire Liddy, a Clare native and a GAA Palestine International spokesperson, said the executives were due to meet the Department of Justice yesterday to find a resolution, but the meeting did not take place.
'We have 24 hours. To say we are disappointed, but we're also outraged, because despite providing all the documentation that we were asked for, all the visas were refused,' Ms Liddy told RTÉ Radio One's Morning Ireland.
'The appeals process, that offered no real opportunity for the trip to proceed, and this is very unfair and untransparent and deeply frustrating. Other agencies have successfully brought children from various countries to Ireland on similar tours.
'Yet, because our players are Palestinian, our Government is blocking their travel, and this is very, very concerning,' she claimed.
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Ms Liddy claimed the GAA Palestine has been requesting 'for several weeks' that the Department of Justice engage with them to find a resolution.
'They have not provided any officer or any help with the process, so we made the decision yesterday. Members of the GAA Palestine executive, including myself, travelled to Dublin with evidence of our application, and we were fobbed off again at the twelfth hour with an email about appealing the decision.
"They didn't have the basic courtesy to meet with us, despite assuring us that we would be meeting someone yesterday, and we were left waiting around all day until 5pm,' she added.
Last week, the group said it was informed by the Immigration Service that their visa applications had been refused due to 'insufficient documentation'.
When asked about the reasons for refusal, Ms Liddy said: 'That's why we actually came up yesterday, I had the laptop with the evidence. We were given misinformation from the Embassy in Tel Aviv, and we have this in writing, and we did not want to go down this road.
'We've been willing to work with them for weeks. We have been in contact with them since February, and we received written correspondence from the embassy because we were looking for guidance around group visa applications.
'And even last week, we personally delivered a letter requesting the Department to meet with us to examine the documentation that we submitted, because the appeal process can be lengthy, and we've run out of time.
"But they had eight weeks to review our documents, and if they believed our documentation was so inadequate, why did they wait until the final week to inform us, they only responded after we initiated a media campaign last week.'
The Palestinians were meant to arrive in Dublin on Friday, July 18, and were scheduled to tour Ireland until August 1.
The tour was set to see Irish and Palestinian children engage in friendly hurling matches across Ireland, showing children from the war-torn area the most important GAA sites in Ireland.
'The appeal process is lengthy. Obviously, that is like a judicial review. Are they going to guarantee that they will have this looked at within 24 hours? We've spoken to several lawyers and barristers, and they said this isn't something that can be done.
'And they left us waiting around all day yesterday. They said someone would meet us. I had the laptop with all of the evidence we have. The GAA safeguarding has been confirmed. We had letters of parental consent, parents' ID, birth certs.
'We've been asking for them to meet with us, not just this week, for weeks, and we've been met with silence.
"Our team in the West Bank, with all of what was going on in the last few days, they had felt a renewed sense of hope because they saw the response and the massive waves of support coming – not only from Ireland, but all around the world, and despite our government's refusal to engage with us.
'We just want to have an open dialogue,' she added.
Last week, Tánaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister, Simon Harris, defended the decision to refuse travel visas for Palestinian children due to take part in a GAA tour of Ireland.
The Fine Gael leader said in the Dáil there were 'legitimate checks in relation to child protection' involved, even though the tour body from the West Bank says it has repeatedly sent documentation and been ignored.
Mr Harris pointed to an appeals process as a possible way forward, even though the tour was scheduled to take place this month and hosts were in place.
Meanwhile, there were protests in Croke Park last Saturday, where a banner, which said 'let them play', was displayed as an appeal to the Irish Immigration Service.
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