In 2020, he had a refugee client who wanted to reunite with a same-sex partner, who was in Saudi Arabia.

From 2017 to date, 54 unaccompanied children – children who arrive in Ireland without an adult looking after them – have gone missing while under Tusla’s care, according to the agency’s figures.

Counting 2020 – when the possibility of international travel withered with the global Covid-19 restrictions – it means their two small boys won’t see their grandparents in Jordan for more than two years, says Ní Shuilleabháin.

The legal challenge, led by solicitor Stephen Kirwan of KOD Lyons, centred on whether the asylum seekers could prove they are “normally resident” in Ireland.

The couple came here in September 2019 seeking asylum and their application for international protection has yet to be processed. They claimed the Road Safety Authority (RSA)...

Stephen Kirwan, an associate solicitor at the law firm KOD Lyons, says that for citizenship-processing delays, he’d usually suggest the judicial review route if an applicant has been waiting for two years or more.

Stephen Kirwan (KOD Lyons) of the Law Society’s human rights and equality committee, described “frustrations” among colleagues that clients in the asylum process were often not getting legal advice until “a very late stage”