Fingerprint checks of asylum applicants in Ireland aimed at establishing whether they have already made a claim in other EU countries have yielded five matches in the six weeks since they were introduced.
Ireland has sent 1,045 asylum fingerprints to be checked against a central database in Luxembourg since the EU-wide comparison system began operating on January 15th. The Eurodac database is aimed at helping to curtail "asylum-shopping", where people make multiple applications for refugee status in various EU states.
It provides for instant checks of the fingerprints of asylum-seekers who have made claims in Ireland against prints taken in other EU states for the same period.
Each EU member-state, apart from Denmark, as well as Iceland and Norway, began forwarding asylum applicants' fingerprints for comparison to the centralised electronic fingerprint register on January 15th. This data can be compared with data already stored in the central database, and a response furnished to indicate whether a match exists in another EU state.
Fingerprints from asylum-seekers taken prior to this date are not entered, so the database is only comparing asylum claims made within the same six-week period.
The five "hits" received by Ireland all related to applicants who had already applied for asylum in the UK between January 15th and February 24th, according to the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner (ORAC).
If the print-matching facility shows that asylum-seekers have already made asylum claims in another EU country, they could be returned to have their claim dealt with there. A spokesman for ORAC said they are pursuing the cases of the five people whose fingerprints have been matched with the British refugee authorities.
The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, welcomed the establishment of the system last month, saying he expected it to reduce the ability of people to "asylum-shop" in the EU.
A Department spokesman said yesterday it would take some time before the system could be assessed. Its implementation could act as a deterrent for people from making multiple claims in different EU states.