UPDATE 11.25 PM 5 JUL:
Deportation plane leaving at 1 am
******** 21 years old - 4 months pregnant by Irish Guy - is the daughter of a woman who has been allowed leave to remain here on humanitarian grounds. She is being deported on the plane. She was allowed a single phonecall to her mother tonight by the Gardai. No room at the inn in Ireland anymore. There are several pregnant women of different nationalities locked up in Mountjoy Women's prison this eveining. Their immediate fate is unclear at the time of writing.
**************************************************

INDYMEDIA.IE 4 JUL:
RAR (Residents Against Racism) have heard from various asylum seekers whom they are in contact with that Gardai were seen in and out of pubs and homes in Blanchardstown picking up approximately 20 Nigerian asylum seekers last night. Some women were also picked up last week in Galway. The men are now in Cloverhill Prison and the women (two at least) are in Mountjoy Women's Prison.

One of the women in Mountjoy is Tanya Dube who was resident for the last 4 years in Galway. This is the same Tanya Dube who after being locked up in the Women's prison in Mountjoy in July 2002 while heavily pregnant, was brought to hospital with a 'guard' of two ban gardai and two female prison officers. She was released after her recovery without any money or train or bus ticket at the time and, after returning to Galway with money provided out of the pocket of a RAR member, was later subsequently brought to Crumlin Hospital with her newborn and gravely ill baby who died after two days.

She is now separated from her husband who has already been deported and her teenage son who is still in Galway.

The RAR activist I spoke to believes a mass deportation to Nigeria is imminent. RAR are thus calling for an EMERGENCY protest at the GNIB Burgh Quay on Tuesday 5th July at 1.30pm.

If you think the disability bill recently passed in the Dail has nothing to do with you, you should think again. If passed into legislation, it represents a major assault on all our constitutional rights. This author has no political allegiance and is concerned with the interests of disabled people and the contribution they can make to the wider community. In that context and for reasons set out below, it is nevertheless necessary to say that Fianna Fail and the PDs deserve a roasting on this issue alone at the next general election.

For the second time they have introduced legislation that is in opposition to everything the disability lobby has asked for - and so desperately needs - and in doing so they are conducting a unique experiment in tampering with the constitution. If they succeed there can be no doubt that the bill will be used as a precedent for future legislation. The first attempt to introduce disability legislation in 2002 ended in disgrace amid an outcry from disability groups because of its inadequacy. Second time round, we were promised there would not be a repeat of the first fiasco - the views and wishes of people with disability were to be taken on board. A Disability Legislation Consultation Group was set up to include senior representatives from a number of disability bodies and for three years they toiled over the content and guiding principles of the bill. A comprehensive set of recommendations were submitted to the government by the DLCG. But the ‘consultation’ turned out to be a charade. The press release issued by the DLCG in May 2005 states:

‘This is now a totally flawed and fundamentally inadequate piece of legislation. It fails to meet the needs of the disability sector and we are appalled that the Government is determined to ram it through the Oireachtas in the face of opposition from the very people it was originally designed to benefit.’

It’s now clear that the consultation was a strategy for keeping potential opponents on side for as long as possible so that the time for effective protest would be minimised. At the time of writing, the Bill awaits the approval of the President who may refer it to the Supreme Court because of its constitutional implications. Whatever the President decides, the government are on notice: the disability lobby will not forget this. The government has, yet again, turned its back on the disability lobby.