Asylum-seekers who arrive in Ireland from today will be met with a very different face of officialdom than those who have come before them.

If they are aged 14 or over, they will be asked for their fingerprints, and face detention if they refuse. If gardai or immigration officers suspect they have unreasonably destroyed their identity documents, or are carrying forged ones, they can also be detained.

These powers are part of new measures and sanctions contained in the Refugee Act 1996, a long-delayed law that sets out new procedures for processing asylum claims.

Asylum-seekers are those who claim recognition and protection as refugees on the basis that they are fleeing persecution on grounds including race, religion or membership of a social group.

The power to detain newly-arrived asylum-seekers on six grounds complements existing Garda powers to hold failed asylum-seekers prior to deportation.

An immigration officer or garda may detain asylum-seekers when they reasonably suspect they pose a threat to national security or public order; have committed a serious non-political crime outside the State; have not made reasonable efforts to establish their true identity; intend to avoid removal from the State in certain circumstances; intend to leave the State and enter another unlawfully; without reasonable cause have destroyed their identity or travel documents or have forged identity documents.

Asylum-seekers who fall foul of the new law will be detained for an initial period of up to 48 hours in the cells of 22 designated Garda stations throughtout the State, including Monaghan, Cork, Waterford, Wexford, Dublin, Dun Laoghaire and Dundalk.

Following a court appearance, an asylum-seeker could then either be released or held in one of 10 places of detention until a decision is made on his or her application to remain in the State as a refugee. If, at any stage while detained, asylum-seekers wish to drop their claims for refugee status and leave the State, they may be deported.

There are no purpose-built detention centres for asylum-seekers. Instead, they will be sent to prisons in Limerick, Cork and the midlands, as well as Mountjoy Prison in Dublin and the neighbouring Training Unit - the two institutions where most failed asylum-seekers are currently held prior to deportation.

Gardai expect most detainees will be held in the training unit, which operates a flexible low-security regime for prisoners nearing the end of their sentences who take part in extensive education and training programmes.

The unit's governor, Mr John O'Hara, said prisoners were unlocked between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m., dined communally and stayed in single en suite "rooms" rather than cells. While detained, asylum-seekers were subject to the same regime as prisoners and could avail of training facilities if they wished, he added.

THE Irish Refugee Council is opposed to detaining asylum-seekers. While the asylum applications of detainees will be prioritised, the council says it is worried processing delays could lead to people being held for months in criminal institutions.

"We are deeply concerned that this is the beginning of the systematic detention of asylum-seekers for non-criminal acts," said the council's legal officer, Mr Doug Cubie. "People who are not charged or convicted of a criminal offence should never be held in detention alongside convicted criminals."

Mr Cubie said it should be recognised that asylum-seekers fleeing persecution may have no choice but to travel with false or forged documents. Under international law, they should not be punished for entering a state illegally to flee persecution. The key test in the new Act would be whether the asylum-seekers had "without reasonable cause" destroyed their identity documents, or were carrying forged ones, he said. "There has to be recognition that `reasonable cause' applies in many cases. Many people can't arrive and seek protection in the State without false or forged documents and to be penalised because of them when they couldn't have got here otherwise would be unjustified," he added.

The head of the recently established Garda National Immigration Bureau, Det Chief Supt Martin Donnellan, said the courts would decide the validity of each person's ongoing detention on any of the Act's six grounds. He said he did not expect huge numbers of people to be detained under the law and hoped the existence of the legislation would be a deterrent to traffickers.

The Act's introduction of fingerprinting was "very productive" as it would allow the authorities to conclusively establish the identity of all asylum-seekers, he said. This would help prevent multiple asylum applications by the same person under different names. Two failed asylum-seekers deported in recent weeks had made applications twice using different identities, according to Det Chief Supt Donnellan.

The prints would also allow immigration officials to check if someone had already claimed asylum in another EU state, or had travelled through another EU country. If this was the case, the Act provided that they may be transferred back to that country for their case to be processed there.

While fingerprinting asylum-seekers brings Ireland in line with other EU states, the Irish Refugee Council views it as "yet another step towards the criminalisation of asylum-seekers". -