Irish Prisoners Abroad Dail Éireann — 2026-07-02 ============================================================ Helen McEntee (FG), Meath East I propose to take Questions Nos. 10 and 11 together. This matter has been raised on a number of occasions by the Deputy and other colleagues. At the outset, I assure the Deputies that my colleagues across our consular teams and I are closely following the case and engaging with Mr. Tatlow-Devally and his family on a regular basis. My Department, in particular our Consulate General in Munich, supported by our embassy in Berlin and the consular directorate in Dublin, has been providing consular assistance since September 2025 when we were first notified of the case. Furthermore, I have raised this issue directly with the State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, Dr. Thomas Steffen, when I met him in May. A dedicated consular officer in the Consulate General in Munich has been assigned to provide consular assistance and support Mr. Tatlow-Devally and his family. Staff in the consulate, including the consul general and deputy consul general, have undertaken six consular visits to him in prison. The most recent visit was earlier this week on Tuesday, 30 June. These visits are an important opportunity to assess the conditions of the detention. I fully appreciate that the prison has a 23-hour lock-up. It is the same for all prisoners in the prison. At the same time, that is a substantial amount of time. The visits provide an opportunity for Mr. Tatlow-Devally when meeting with our team to raise any concerns about his treatment with us. In turn, we have kept his family informed about these visits and remain in direct contact with them. I am not aware that he has been denied phone calls with his family. My last understanding was that there had been regular engagement and opportunity for engagement. Officials in the consular directorate of my Department and Munich are working to facilitate a visit to Mr. Tatlow-Devally by a number of Deputies. We have been advocating for and supporting him in whatever way we can in respect of engagement not just with the family, but also with others who wish to visit. We are liaising with the relevant German authorities with a view to obtaining the necessary visit permissions and will engage directly with Deputies in that regard. The decision as to whether to permit visits is one for the German authorities. It has been made clear to us that this is something that should be possible. We hope this would be followed through on. My Department will continue to provide all appropriate consular assistance to Mr. Tatlow-Devally and his family. As I previously outlined, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations defines the parameters of consular assistance in international law, which is, in turn, reflected in my Department and our consular assistance charter. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and its embassies and consulates are precluded from intervening in the judicial and legal process of another country. However, when a citizen is on trial abroad, their rights and interests have to be represented, including by their defence lawyers, as I know is the case in this instance. A number of trial dates have been set for the coming weeks. The last time we spoke about this in the House, dates had not been set and there was concern about that. Two hearings have taken place this week and further hearings are scheduled for tomorrow, 3 July. There will be subsequent hearings on 22, 24, 27 and 29 July. There are further dates out to January 2027. My officials will of course continue to follow developments very closely. I have asked that they continue to keep me updated while ensuring that regular engagement continues with Mr. Tatlow-Devally and his family, whom I appreciate are under huge stress. --- 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/2026-07-02/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:14+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-02