An air charter company was moved to change its in-flight catering after a deportation flight taking 24 men to Pakistan served a “inappropriate” traditional breakfast of sausages.
A September 2025 deportation flight that carried 24 men home from the Republic of Ireland to their native Pakistan — at a cost of €473,000 ($550,000, £410,000) — was written up by a human rights observer because the detainees were given a traditional Full Irish breakfast. National newspaper The Irish Times states it has now forced the release of internal government documents on the flights, which they say show the shortcomings of the service provided by the state and its private partners.
According to the report, deportees are accompanied by both police officers to guard them for the duration of their flight and a human rights monitor who writes a report on any abuses they witness during their deportation. For instance, another 2025 flight saw the human rights monitor narrate the situation when a deportee was restrained and then physically carried aboard the plane after he refused to go voluntarily.
It was stated his refusal was down to the Pakistani deportee not having his mobile phone on his person, it already having been placed in his baggage and stowed in the hold.
As for the September pork sausage breakfast flight, the report stated three of the 24 deported men had been held in prison before their deportation on the grounds of being “high risk”, and once in the air: “the quality of the food provided was of a lower standard than expected and that the serving of pork sausages as part of a full Irish breakfast was inappropriate”. As The Irish Times notes in their report, Pakistan “has a majority Muslim population” and halal food was expected onboard.
The report states the company changed their onboard catering after this incident.
The ‘full’ fry-up breakfast is part of the indigenous food culture of the British Isles, including the Full English, Full Scottish, and Full Irish. As well as the traditional pork sausages, bacon, fried eggs, black pudding, and fried bread the Scottish may add a slice of fried haggis, while the Full Irish or Ulster Fry adds a slice of white pudding and soda bread.
Many now also consider relative newcomer baked beans part of these meals, a legacy of Second World War rationing and post-war poverty when shortages made imported canned foods a mainstay.
While a meal prepared according to the cultural norms of the originating country of the flight may seem trivial, getting the right food can prove crucial in some migration contexts. In 2020 a Sudanese origin migrant at a government-funded asylum seeker accommodation hotel in Glasgow, Scotland, went on a stabbing spree allegedly over the lack of “culturally appropriate” meals which left him “very hungry”. As stated at the time:
“The attacker was a Sudanese asylum seeker and he’d been telling his friends that he was very hungry in the hotel. In the past few days he was threatening people, and it was reported to the staff the day before,” said Kurdish Community Scotland activist Ako Zada… they were fed three times a day but people were complaining at getting the same spaghetti and macaroni cheese all the time. It wasn’t culturally appropriate for them”
Six people were stabbed and the knifeman was shot dead by police.
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