THE REFUGEE Appeals Tribunal completed 2,705 appeals in 2008, an increase of 25 per cent on the previous year, according to its annual report, just released. The number of appeals received also increased, from 2,792 in 2007 to 3,070 in 2008, an increase of 10 per cent.
This left the tribunal with 3,412 live appeals at the end of the year, of which 2,096 were received in 2008.
Some 837 of the appeals were received in 2007, 411 in 2006, 55 in 2005 and 13 went back to 2004. The average length of time taken to process substantive appeals was 30 weeks, based on a sample of 5,943 cases.
The vast majority of decisions made by the Refugee Applications Commissioner, to which asylum applicants make their applications, were appealed to the RAT in 2008, with 92 per cent of all appealable recommendations going to the tribunal.
Appeals are dealt with either as substantive appeals, which can receive a full oral hearing, or accelerated or prioritised appeals, which do not have a full hearing.
The latter relate to cases deemed “manifestly unfounded” or Dublin Regulation II appeals, where it is considered the applicant should have applied for asylum in another EU country, as he or she had come from there. The cases deemed “manifestly unfounded” doubled between 2007 and 2008.
Nigeria was the country from which the largest number of appeals came, representing one in three of all appellants, accounting for 1,021 appeals, and outnumbering by more than five to one the next greatest number, 186 from DR Congo, at 6 per cent of the total. Pakistani appellants provided 5 per cent of the total, with 4 per cent coming from Sudan, 3 per cent each from Georgia, Zimbabwe, Moldova, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Other countries made up the remaining 43 per cent.
Almost nine out of 10, 88 per cent, of the recommendations made by the Refugee Applications Commissioner were upheld by the tribunal in 2008.
The proportion upheld has remained fairly constant for the past six years.
The rate of appeals upheld varies from country to country, however, with 20 per cent of appeals from Somalia upheld, compared with 2 per cent from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Seven per cent of Nigerian appeals were upheld, 9 per cent from Sudan, and 12 per cent of those from Moldova.
Fees for cases range from €575 for an oral hearing to €165 where the case is withdrawn, with cases decided only on papers costing €300. Fees paid to the 35 members of the tribunal, who are appointed by the Minister for Justice and must be either a solicitor or barrister of at least five years’ standing, amounted to €1,182,638.
Legal costs accounted for €3,428,130.
Legal papers were filed in 265 judicial reviews of decisions made by members of the tribunal during the year.
The report also states that, following a Supreme Court judgment requiring the tribunal to give access to previous decisions to the legal representatives of appellants, it set up online access to a database of such decisions.
This required the development of a secure online system with registration available on request to legal representatives.
This involved rendering anonymous all decisions for the years 2006 to date, and set-aside decisions (where the appellant succeeded) going back to the establishment of the tribunal.