International Protection Office making faster decisions amid application surge, says director

A total of 13,227 people sought international protection in the State last year, new figures show, down by 400 on the previous year.

The numbers do not include the 102,000 Ukrainians who have fled to Ireland since Russia invaded their homeland in February 2022.

The number of applicants in each of the last two years has been almost t three times the 2019 total, when Ireland received 4,781 requests for international protection.

This “big jump” leaves Ireland to “more or less on a par” with the European norm, said Richard Dixon, who leads the office that processes and determines protection applications, including requests from Ukrainians under a specific temporary protection scheme.

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The increase, which leaves Ireland “still slightly below” the European average, has required a doubling of staff at the International Protection Office (IPO) in the last year, to about 400, while new processes have enabled faster decisions that are no less sound, Mr Dixon said.

Budget 2024 committed €34 million to his office and the separate tribunal that deals with appeals of IPO verdicts.

Mr Dixon said he must ensure this “substantial” investment delivers “legally robust, fair decisions as quickly as possible so people can get on with their lives, be that with positive or negative decisions”.

Asylum seekers are entitled to shelter and other necessities while their protection applications are pending. The accommodation system, under the remit of the Department of Integration, is under severe pressure and has failed to secure enough bed spaces for those arriving, leaving hundreds of single, adult, male applicants without shelter.

The most recent figures show there were more than 17,500 international protection applications pending with the IPO, of which less than 2 per cent have been in the system for more than two years.

At the end of 2021, the IPO was determining 300 to 350 cases per month, he said, while during last November it decided on more than 1,000.

Mr Dixon said applicants must demonstrate persecution in their home country, which is a “high standard, rightly, because refugee status, subsidiary protection status or any permission to remain is something that is sacred and should be protected”.

Ukrainians seeking temporary protection are subject to a simpler registration process which requires them to confirm they are legally resident in that country. This operation has “worked smoothly”, he said.

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The increased investment in the international protection system has been in people, processes and technology, Dixon said. He points to the introduction of a procedure to fast-track applications of people arriving from eight states the Minister for Justice has deemed to be safe countries of origin: Georgia, South Africa, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro.

When launched in November 2022, the IPO said the procedure responds to a significant rise in protection applications, of which more than a quarter were from countries deemed safe.

The IPO publicly committed to deciding these cases within three months, which it had been doing consistently until last August. Since fully digitising the system in August, it has shaved a further 30 days off the process, Mr Dixon said.

In response to parliamentary questions last month, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee, whose department is responsible for the IPO, said applications associated with these eight countries typically took 22 to 26 months before the acceleration procedure came in. She said 88 per cent of 1,431 fast-track decisions were refusals.

The median turnaround time for first-instance decisions for all countries reduced from 18 months in 2022 to 12 months by late 2023, she said. The Minister provided figures showing that, across all cohorts except for Ukrainians, protective status or permission to remain was granted in 72 per cent of decisions in 2022 and 37 per cent last year up to the end of October.

Ms McEntee explained that the higher proportion of permissions to remain granted in 2022 reflects the impact of the “once-in-a-generation” regularisation scheme for certain applicants in the international protection process for more than two years. An advisory group, led by Dr Catherine Day, recommended this approach in late 2020 to help clear the backlog.

Appeals to the International Protection Appeals Tribunal, which is independent from the IPO, are now being determined within five months on average, down from 15 months, Ms McEntee said.

In its October 2020 document, the advisory group recommended a target of six months for all IPO decisions, but this assumed there would be about 3,500 applications per year.

With numbers surpassing the previous record of 11,600 applications in 2002, the target set “cannot be delivered” within the recommended time frame, the Department of Justice said in a recent report on modernising the system. The new goal is to issue 1,000 decisions each month in 2024.

The accelerated process and other IPO changes have “undoubtedly” contributed to a drop in people arriving from Georgia, he says.

In 2022, 2,710 Georgians sought protection in this State, more than double the 1,065 who applied last year. The nationality represented a fifth of applicants – the highest of any cohort – in 2022 but dropped to 8 per cent (behind Nigerians, Algerians, Afghans and Somalians) in 2023.

Dixon stresses that the speedier system in no way dilutes thoroughness. Applicants from these states are “entitled to absolutely the same procedure” as others, he said. Time has been removed, rather than steps.

These cases are no easier to determine, he added, as the office is “legally, morally and ethically” obliged to consider every application on its merits and to take individual circumstances into account.

There has also been a dramatic reduction in the numbers presenting without documents this year, he said, and his office is working closely with airport and border control authorities, as well as An Garda Síochána.

“Being able to prove your identity is a critical part of the immigration system ... We need to be confident that the individual presenting is who they say they are because otherwise it is potentially a weakness in our controls.”

A Department of Justice spokesman said the Minister had commenced a review of safe countries of origin which should be finalised in the coming weeks.

“We are committed to regularly reviewing the existing countries and examining the potential to designate other countries as safe countries of origin” under the International Protection Act 2015 (Safe Country of Origin), he said.

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