A 14-YEAR-OLD schoolboy has been granted leave to remain in Ireland with his mother and older brother.

Nonso Muojeke attends Tullamore College, and teachers and students from the school had campaigned for him to remain here after he received a deportation order.

The Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS) of the Department of Justice and Equality has today confirmed that the family have been granted permission to remain in the State.

The INIS indicated that this position was arrived at following a detailed re-consideration of the family’s immigration case in light of court proceedings and the receipt of updated submissions from the family in September.

The re-consideration was completed towards the end of last week with the relevant decision letters having been issued earlier this week.

A number of TDs had raised the case in the Dáil and a protest was held outside Leinster House in June. A petition to stop the family from being deported received over 21,000 signatures.

Nonso arrived in Ireland from Nigeria in 2007, when he was just two years old. His mother said she was forced to flee Nigeria with her two sons after her husband died.

The family’s application for asylum was declined in 2009 and a deportation order was issued in June.

‘Excelled against all odds’ 

Speaking about the case in the Dáil earlier this year, local Fianna Fáil TD Barry Cowen said the Muojeke children “excelled … against all the odds”.

They have flourished in their schools, in their community and in our country … Victor, the older boy, is now on a scholarship at the University of Limerick. Nonso is at Tullamore College and is an integral part of that community and that education system.

“They are as Irish, I believe, as the Minister or myself. They have not been a financial burden on the State, and will not be going forward.”

Cowen was among those to welcome today’s news, saying the family “can now cement roots in Tullamore”.

Responding to the news, Fine Gael TD Marcella Corcoran-Kennedy said the level of support that Nonso and his family received from Tullamore College and the wider Tullamore community is “testament to the huge contribution that they have made to the town since they moved here over 10 years ago”.