Ireland no longer has the contacts to make things happen in DC - former US special envoy

Vivienne Clarke

The former special envoy to the US John Deasy has claimed that Ireland no longer has the necessary contacts “to make things happen when they need to happen” in Washington DC.

Highlighting the case of Seamus Culleton, Deasy said that such situations are only resolved quickly when they are “politicised and publicised”.

Speaking on RTÉ radio’s News at One, Deasy questioned “what kind of representation” Culleton had received from the Irish consulate in Austin Texas over the last five months since he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Boston.

Culleton, from Glenmore in Co Kilkenny, Mr Culleton was picked up by ICE agents last September and taken to a detention centre in Texas, where he remains.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs earlier on Tuesday said that Culleton's case was “brought to the attention of [the] department before Christmas or late last year". She said that they had been "providing support and consular assistance to him".

"I acknowledge it's a really distressing situation for him and we want to do everything that we can to support him," she said.

Micheál Martin said he would like to see Seamus Colleton freed from the ICE facility. He said the issue of the undocumented Irish in the United States has been a concern for quite some time, not just during the current administration.

Deasy said that “locking up” any Irish citizen in this manner, for this length of time “can’t be tolerated in any circumstances.”

Deasy called for “someone in the Dáil” to seek “a record of the communications between Seamus Culleton, his family and the Irish Consulate in Austin and in Washington and a record of what they then did or didn't do in the last five months.

“That is the critical thing because it can't be tolerated and you know any Irish citizen should not be left in this kind of a situation for this length of time.

“I think some politicians have understood for some time that we have a problem with representation in Washington and this is just another example of it. We do need professional political operatives with in-depth contacts with Republicans and we don't have that in Washington.

“We don't have the requisite necessary contacts within the Republican Party to make things happen when we need them to happen and that's a big problem.”

Deasy said the bottom line was that if a relative of his had been locked up like Culleton he would ensure that it got “political quickly”.

“When these cases pop up it seems to me that the only times there is a result... is when it gets politicised and when it gets publicised. We found that out recently with a couple of well-known cases.

“Politics doesn't change. It's about contacts, relationships, it's about people knowing who's in power and turning that lever.

"Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of influence and access that we used to have."