Long-planned visits by more than 80 Palestinian children and young people will have to be cancelled if visas are not issued by the weekend, their tour organisers say.
At least 33 young GAA players, members of the Ramallah-based Moataz Sarsour GAA club and more than 40 dancers and musicians of the Lajee Center in Bethlehem, are due to visit Ireland this month.
Despite submitting visa applications for their members along with required documents, including birth certificates and passports, in early May neither organisation has received a visa or an explanation for the delay.
The GAA group are due to arrive on July 18th with the Lajee group on July 20th.
Given journey times – by coach from the West Bank where both organisations are based into Jordan, and by plane from Amman into Egypt or Turkey for flights to Dublin – they would need visas by Sunday, July 13th or Monday 14th at the latest, they say.
Orla O’Neill, a member of group helping organise venues and activities for the Lajee Center group, said their planned July visit has been cancelled. They hope the group can come in late August if visas come through.
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“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,” said Ms O’Neill.
“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.”
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 over €30,000 as it had had to provide proof of payment for coaches from Ramallah to Amman and return flights from Amman to Cairo to Dublin, for the visa applications.
“We will lose all of that if the visas don’t come through. 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, 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”.
He said: “Verifying an application is an important part of our immigration system and the checks involved can take time to complete.
“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.”