Most of the asylum-seekers granted refugee status are being refused the status in the first phase of their application, new figures reveal, writes Arthur Beesley.
They show that more than half the applicants granted the status since January 2002 had to bring their cases before the Refugee Appeals Tribunal after they were refused by the office of Refugee Applications Commissioner, which handles cases in the first instance.
The information was released by the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, in a written response to a parliamentary question.
Separately, Mr McDowell is expected to bring proposals to the Cabinet next week on the implications of a Supreme Court judgment which said the State was not obliged to grant residency to non-EU immigrant parents of Irish-born children.
The Government has ruled out mass deportations of the 11,000 people whose applications for residency are outstanding, but it has stopped accepting new applications.
Measured proportionally, the figures show that the appeal tribunal granted refugee status in about three times as many cases last year as the applications commissioner. Both bodies, which are independent of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, refused the overwhelming majority of applications.
The Refugee Applications Commissioner, Ms Berenice O'Neill, granted the status in 893 of the 11,634 cases she assessed in 2002.
Though applications are managed case by case, this implies a success rate to applicants of about 7½ per cent. These figures contrast with those of the appeals tribunal, chaired by Mr P.J. Farrell, which granted refugee status in 1,097 of the 5,099 cases managed in 2002. This implies a success rate of about 21½ per cent.
The Irish Refugee Council said it was impossible to understand why so few applicants were being granted refugee status in the first channel. Its chief executive, Mr Peter O'Mahony, said questions were raised about the assessments in the first stage of the process.
He said: "One would have thought that an appeal system would be just for a relatively small number of applicants who missed out the first time round, but this has been consistent for certainly well over a year."
Mr O'Mahony said while the provision of legal services had improved, many applicants were not being given advice until late in the process. "It's in everyone's interest that people are picked up at the first stage," he said.
Figures for January-February this year show the trend is continuing. The applications commissioner granted 71 of the 1,926 cases she assessed. Of the 393 appeals heard in the same period, 187 were granted.
Labour's justice spokesman, Mr Joe Costello, said he believed the initial procedure was hard-line and made strict demands of applicants. The appeal system , he added, appeared to to take wider humanitarian considerations into account.
