DFA argued that releasing feedback on decision to label Algeria as “safe” would hurt diplomatic relations

In late 2023, when officials in the Department of Justice were chewing over plans to earmark Algeria as a “safe” country, they sought the opinion of counterparts in the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA). 

When a country is designated as safe, asylum officers assume cases filed by its citizens aren't genuine. 

People seeking asylum from that country have to work harder to rebut that assumption and fight to be believed.  

In January 2024, the Department of Justice placed Algeria in its list of “safe” countries.

But it wasn’t clear what the DFA had said about the move. It wouldn’t release its feedback under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act. 

After a little over a year and a few submissions to the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC), the body ordered it to release parts of it. And it did. 

But DFA officials managed to convince the OIC to keep its concluding lines private, “redacted under  Section 33 (1) (d) of the FOI Act”, it says. 

That means releasing it is “expected to affect adversely international relations of the State”, says the law.

On 6 October 2025, an OIC reviewer said in an email that among other things, DFA officials argued they had offered their opinion to the Department of Justice in confidence. 

“The Department submitted that it was vital that it be able to continue to provide confidential, frank and comprehensive information in relation to matters such as those addressed in the record,” they said. 

In response to the argument that Algeria is already considered safe by Ireland, and so its government wouldn’t be too angry to hear potentially negative things that went unheeded, the DFA officials had said they disagreed.

Their decision was based on “direct experience of the bilateral relationship with Algeria and the harm that could be caused by the release of the information in the record”, said the OIC official who was relaying the DFA’s submission.

Ireland’s relationship with Algeria is delicate, “carefully managed across several areas, taking account of a range of issues, including matters where there was an awareness of sensitivity on the Algerian side”, said their email.

“The Department argued that it was therefore incumbent on it to exercise caution in public statements by Ireland on the human rights situations in that country, so as not to prejudice the entirety of the relationship,” they said. 

A spokesperson for the DFA did not respond to queries sent on 4 December asking why full release of its opinion on safety of Algeria would impact relations with the country if it were in line with the Department of Justice’s decision to earmark it as safe. 

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice did not directly address a query about whether the DFA feedback concluded that Algeria was safe for everyone – and if not, why it didn’t heed it. 

The secrecy around DFA’s full opinion about safety of Algeria, and how a slate of other internal records showed last year that the Department of Justice had downplayed human rights concerns, raise questions about whether factors beyond a fair assessment of what’s happening on the ground shape decisions to place a country on the safe list. 

Trade partners 

Its relationship with Algeria is economically important to Ireland. In 2023, Ireland’s dairy exports to Algeria were worth €100 million, according to official figures.

“Algeria was the 13th largest export destination country for Irish dairy in 2023,” ex-Minister for Agriculture and Food, Fianna Fáil’s Charlie McConalogue, told the Dáil in March 2024. 

Between January and mid-July of 2024, Ireland exported nearly 2040 live bovines to Algeria. 

And in 2023, Ireland imported €96 million worth of fertilisers mainly from Algeria, Egypt and Morocco, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs website.

Micheál Martin, the Fianna Fáil leader and Taoiseach, has said that Algeria is a vital partner for Ireland.

“It is our third biggest market for food in Africa, after Nigeria and South Africa. Algeria is an important political actor in the region and in multilateral organisations, including the UN, African Union and Union for the Mediterranean,” he told the Dáil last year.

In 2024, at an Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee to mark Africa Day, Mohammed Belaoura, Algeria’s ambassador to Ireland, said that the opening of an Algerian embassy in Dublin in 2020 reflects “the commitment of the Algerian authorities to strengthening bilateral relations with Ireland in all fields”. 

“Algeria is Ireland's fourth main trade partner in Africa. This upward trend is anticipated to continue, reflecting untapped economic potential and fostering business, investment and cultural exchanges,” he said.

What did you say?

“It’s probably fair to assume that if the DFA said anything positive about Algeria’s human rights record, they wouldn’t be so determined to withhold it,” says immigration solicitor Wendy Lyon.

Initially, the OIC had fully overturned the DFA’s decision against release in a draft order which it sent out, offering a last-chance opportunity to respond. 

After hearing out the DFA one last time, and then giving us a shot to respond to its arguments, it tweaked the scope of release.

Part of the DFA feedback that was successfully unredacted says Algeria had some relief and stability after years of tumult stemming from a protest movement. 

“However, there are still multiple challenges to Algeria’s safety and security, both exogenous and endogenous,” it says.

It goes on to say that nine EU countries consider it safe, and then outlines security concerns, like border management troubles and problems arising from the presence of Da’esh fighters. Then it cuts off to the redaction.

Freedom House, a non-profit democracy watchdog in the United States, has considered Algeria unfree since 2005. It lowered its democracy score from 32 in 2024 to 31 this year. 

In downplaying concerns about the treatment of sexual minorities in Algeria while considering whether it was safe for everyone, Department of Justice officials had said that the Algerian government doesn’t set out to find gay people to punish them, internal documents showed.

“And there is no real risk of prosecution, even when the authorities become aware of such behaviour,” they’d said. 

It had also ignored advice from the migrants' aid centre, NASC, which had told it that Algeria should not be designated as “safe”.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said that people from countries assumed to be safe can still open asylum claims. 

“All applications are considered based on the personal circumstances of the applicant,” the spokesperson said.

It’s also keeping the docket of 15 countries it currently considers safe under review, they said.

Walls close in

In 2023, when the Department of Justice began considering Algeria and a couple of other countries for the safe list, the number of asylum cases from Algerian citizens was on the rise.

By December 2023, it came second in the list of countries with the highest number of asylum claims, official figures show. 

But in December 2024, just under a year after it had “safe” attached to its name, it didn’t feature in the top-five list. It wasn’t on that docket in November 2025 either.

It's unclear whether the initial surge in numbers influenced the decision to consider earmarking Algeria as safe. 

The Department of Justice has also rolled out a policy to process cases from citizens of not just “safe” countries but those with the highest number of applications every three months faster, leaving them scrambling to get legal advice on time.  

On Tuesday, the Irish Times quoted the Minister for Justice, Fianna Fáil’s Jim O’Callaghan TD as saying that a higher number of people seeking asylum posed a threat to “social cohesion” and that the government was seeking to lower it.

To what extent harsher immigration policies can actually discourage people from moving somewhere is uncertain, though, said immigration barrister Anthony Hanrahan at an Immigration Asylum & Citizenship Bar Association (IACBA) conference on Friday. 

Most people are probably not tuned in to internal policy changes in a country they may end up moving to, he said, and there is a world of factors at play in why fewer people from some countries land here.  

But “word-of-mouth, no doubt, can have a certain specific effect”, he said. 

The spokesperson for the Department of Justice said one aspect of the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact, which it has opted into, is a plan to formalise a list of “safe” countries of origin across the zone. 

Though “the right of Member States to designate additional countries outside the common list will continue”, they said.

On 8 December, when the EU Council revealed names of countries it had decided were “safe”, Algeria was not among them. 

“The Council agreed that the following countries should be designated as safe countries of origin at EU level: Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo*, Morocco and Tunisia”, says a press release on its website. 

Patricia Brazil, barrister and law lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, said at the IACBA conference on Friday that sometimes there are minority groups who are vulnerable in a country that might be safe to live in for others. 

Still, their asylum request will be viewed with suspicion and assumed to be bogus. Because “the designation of safe countries doesn’t allow that kind of nuance”, she said.