Foreign Policy
Dail Éireann — 2025-04-01
============================================================

Naoise Ó Cearúil (FF), Kildare North

To add additional context, in recent weeks I have been contacted by people and received reports of them attempting to travel to the United States from Dublin and Shannon, with electronic system for travel authorization, ESTA, visas and without any criminal conviction or criminal record. There seems to be no reason for them not to have gained entry into the United States. I appreciate it is for the United States immigration service to deal with matters such as this but there are questions there, particularly when our citizens seem to be going by the rules that have been laid out by the United States.
Will the Tánaiste liaise with his counterpart in the United States or with the US Embassy here in Ireland? We have an excellent relationship with that country. There is a two-way flow, as the Tánaiste mentioned, not just in terms of trade but between our peoples. It is crucial that Irish people can travel to the Unites States for both pleasure and business. There must be a certainty that if people have an ESTA and have abided by the rules, they will get into the US.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-04-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:40+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-04-01