A garda immigration bureau with powers to detain failed asylum-seekers before their deportation is to be set up by the Government, the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, announced yesterday The Minister also said it was his intention that all applications for asylum would be dealt with within six months.
Once the legal process for asylum application was exhausted the Minister said there would be a 14-day period in which the applicant could seek judicial review and the Minister would determine whether there was a prima facie case. If there was not and there were no humanitarian grounds, the applicant would be deported.
The Minister would not say if there was to be a detention centre for failed asylum applicants. However, Government sources said the periods of detention would be very short, mainly overnight and would probably be in Garda station cells. There was no proposal to build a detention centre but Government sources said this could not be ruled out if the rate of illegal immigration continued to rise.
The Minister announced the immediate establishment of the Garda National Immigration Bureau to be headed by a detective chief superintendent. It will have a central staff of 37 including a detective superintendent and two detective inspectors.
The new bureau will also have liaison officers in Paris and London. Most of the 15,000 asylum-seekers in the State at present are Nigerians and Romanians who have arrived from France and Britain.
The Minister said the measures were necessary because of the rapidly increasing numbers of asylum-seekers. There were 1,036 asylum applications last month compared with 315 in April last year, an increase of 329 per cent. In March 972 people applied compared with 358 in March 1999, an increase of 271 per cent, according to Government figures.
Mr O'Donoghue said the Cabinet meeting in Waterford yesterday approved the drafting of amendments to the 1999 Immigration Act to strengthen the deportation procedures and to provide the Garda with the powers to detain deportees.
He said it was his intention that all applications would be dealt with within six months. He plans to increase the number of staff in his Department dealing with applications. Some 300 additional staff have already been recruited in the past year.
He said all applicants would have the benefit of due process with free legal aid to assist their applications and appeals.