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· An additional 80 civilian staff to be deployed at the airport at border control booths on a 24/7 basis

· 125 Gardaí to be released from immigration functions at Dublin Airport

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald today announced a major programme to civilianise immigration functions currently undertaken by members of An Garda Síochána. The Minister made the announcement while visiting the immigration control facilities at Dublin Airport.

A number of immigration functions, such as border management and registration of non-EEA persons’ permission to be in the State, are in the main carried out by or under the control of An Garda Síochána.

Minister Fitzgerald said:

As part of my focus on reforming policing in Ireland, I am committed to examining and pursuing all opportunities to civilianise non–frontline Garda tasks, to get Gardai out from behind desks and provide a visible policing service on the ground.

The civilianisation of immigration functions represents an important step forward in this effort as it will release some 125 Gardaí for other core policing duties.

This initiative makes sense both from an efficiency and economic perspective. The programme, starting with Dublin Airport, will free up Garda members for other core policing duties while also allowing the immigration service of my Department to both reduce costs and continue to discharge the effective management of our border and immigration system.

The work on the implementation of the first phase of this civilianisation programme will commence immediately and will release Gardaí carrying out frontline immigration checks at both terminals at Dublin Airport. Further phases commencing next year will focus on deploying civilian officers to other major ports of entry to the State and the transfer of the immigration permission registration function from An Garda Síochána to the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service of the Department of Justice and Equality. The move to a 24/7 civilian operation in Terminal 1 is expected to be completed next summer with Terminal 2 completed by December, 2015.

Read the full press release

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