Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration (Ireland)

But it must be very hard to get those papers in Gaza these days, is it?

First of all, to be clear, the Department of Justice is responsible for our visa refusal, not the embassy.

and out of 13 government palestinian scholars i am the only one refused alongside with 57 of other palestinian students who held fully funded university scholarship in ireland i provided my all my past required documents as transcripts and etc Through my continuous applications, I had them previously prepared.

Just my latest work records were simply not available as many official records, institutions have been destroyed or disrupted, making it impossible to obtain.

I tried to manage it by providing some references in the appeal.

Yes.

I think the Irish Department of Justice also said that they're concerned that students might not return home after completing their study.

What would you say to that?

made in 2023 from a Garda whistleblower.

We know that Alan Kelly, who's been on this issue for a long time, claimed in the Dáil on Thursday that Helen McEntee correctly referred it to the Office of the Protected Disclosures Commission, who tried to send it to the Department of Justice.

And then Kelly alleges it was then sent back to the Gardaí.

But Helen McEntee was at a doorstep yesterday where it seems from the papers today, journalists were putting her under pressure about it.

She was very clear that she followed the law.

And she says that when you're talking about issues around protected disclosures, there's a limit to what she can discuss publicly.

But as we've seen previously in the Department of Justice, this can be a thorny area for justice ministers.

This story will go on into next week.

That, of course, provides political cover too, but you can see breaches within it already, and particularly for Helen McEntee, I think the big issue raised by Alan Kelly.

kind of centred on the fact that a whistleblower whose disclosure was making its way through the Department of Justice and then ultimately went back into the Garda system, that his identity at that point became known.

And in Alan Kelly's view, that had a detrimental effect on his life.

And he is laying that at the door of Helen McEntee, who was Justice Minister at the time.

The other big issue then centers on those Garda holsters and whether or not the minister had any role there.

She doesn't think that she had.

But of course, we do know at some point in 2020, alarm bells were raised at the Department of Justice.

That's something that Jim O'Callaghan has answered in a question to Alan Kelly in the past.