The number of unaccompanied minors applying for asylum but later deemed “ineligible” due to their real age has more than
doubled since 2023.
Over the past three years, nearly 200 adult asylum seekers were placed in Tusla care homes before it was discovered they were over 18. It has not been revealed how many were placed in schools with Irish children.
These figures come as Fine Gael TD James Geoghegan criticised “contradictory accounts” about which agency is responsible for age verification in the international protection system.
At an October meeting of the Public Accounts Committee, officials stated the matter was for Tusla. However, in follow‑up correspondence, the Department of Justice clarified that responsibility lies with the International Protection Office (IPO).
“We now know that while the IPO is legally responsible for age assessment, the department has admitted that Tusla’s views have, in practice, been treated as decisive ‘for many years’. That was never disclosed to PAC during the hearing,” Geoghegan said.
“This blurring of roles has created a system where legal responsibility, operational practice and accountability simply do not line up.”
The system shambles has been thrown into the spotlight after revelations that the Somali asylum seeker charged with murdering 17‑year‑old Ukrainian Vadym Davydenko (Вадим Давиденко) in a Tusla care home is now believed to be an adult.
Unverified rumours have circulated suggesting that Davydenko was stabbed and mutilated following an argument about food in the gated apartment complex where both he and the unnamed Somali were accommodated but no official details of the killing have been confirmed.
Two weeks before his 18th birthday when he would be eligible for conscription, Davydenko had left his girlfriend and fled from Ukraine to Poland but missed a connecting flight to Dublin. His parents told Ukrainian reporters that they urged him to return home, but he boarded the next flight before being murdered under Tusla care three days later.
Following his death, Irish Times journalist Kitty Holland told the Pat Kenny Show that Davydenko had travelled to Ireland to study computer science so he could return home and contribute to the war effort, but this contradicted
Ukrainian reporting that Davydenko had recently been accepted to a Kharkiv university to study computer science there.
Among Ukrainians commenting on reports of his murder, the most common phrase was: “You can’t escape your fate.”
🔗
archive.ph
