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Home Page > News > Irish couple hunger strike outside Enda Kenny’s Mayo offices for visas

Irish couple hunger strike outside Enda Kenny’s Mayo offices for visas

Authorities need more documentation before allowing in adoptive children

KERRY O'SHEA,

IrishCentral Intern

Published Tuesday, December 13, 2011, 8:24 AM

Updated Tuesday, December 13, 2011, 10:03 AM

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Irish passport - Irish couple have gone on hunger strike until their adopted children are given their papers

Photo by Google Images

Enda Kenny’s office in Castlebar, Co Mayo has become the stage for the newest protest in Ireland as of late. A couple from Sligo has set up camp there and has since began a hunger strike in order to attain visas for their newly adopted children.

Ann Dugan and her husband are fighting to gain visas for their adoptive children who currently are in a Turkish orphanage. Dugan became legal guardian of the two children, who are her nieces, when their mother died two years ago.

“They’re my blood relatives,” said Dugan. Irish authorities are claiming that more documentation is needed before the visas will be provided.

Dugan wants to have the children with her in Ireland before Christmas arrives, giving just over a week for the visas to be issued.

Listen to the brief NewsTalk clip of Ann Dugan here:

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pilib04 | Dec 31, 2011, 04:29 PM EST

Murph46, the Hunger Strikers would have understood and sympathized with their modern day counterparts. Read the writings of Bobby Sands if you think different.

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pilib04 | Dec 30, 2011, 11:26 AM EST

The issues of immigration are always difficult, but Ireland is among the few countries who owes so much to those countries who opened their doors to Irish immigrants willingly or unwillingly. In spite of my contempt for successive English governments and their brutal occupation of Ireland, England remains one of the places who have absorbed an enormous number of Irish. I have hear that upwards of 25% of the English country is of Irish descent. This family should be united immediately. Quibling over who will pay for their care is miserly when compared to the millions of Irish who took up in other countries. I remember being told by my aunt about the "No Irish Need Apply" signs that hanged in the employment offices in the 1930-40's, particularly during WW2. Ireland has an obligation to its own, but it can never forget the past.

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joycean | Dec 13, 2011, 03:25 PM EST

If children of mine, biological or adopted, were in a foreign orphanage, I'd be camping out on someone's doorstep if I thought I could get them out sooner. My grandmother and her sibs were orphaned in Ireland and her 18 year old sister working as a maid in Boston and their unmarried aunts working as seamstresses worked for two years to save every penny to bring those children out of Irish orphanages to Boston. My grandmother was grateful for the rest of her life.

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Murph46 | Dec 13, 2011, 10:17 AM EST

Shame on them for dishonoring the real hunger strike that killed O'hara,Hughes,Sands,Lynch and others.

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joycean | Dec 13, 2011, 09:47 AM EST

biggles008, It's tough, isn't it? The Irish are being asked to be charitable when it isn't easy. It's time you all grew up and started acccepting your responsibility instead of always being on the receiving end - asking other countries to accept your people as immigrants, effectively supporting your excess people.

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biggles008 | Dec 13, 2011, 09:32 AM EST

Bring children to Ireland and claim big children's allowance and we stone broke.

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