A Dublin solicitor has been appointed to head the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, the body which will hear appeals against initial decisions on refugee status. He is Mr P. J. Farrell, head of finance and operations at the firm McCann Fitzgerald.
Announcing the appointment, the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, said most of the measures were now in place to allow the commencement of the Refugee Act, which was passed in 1996. The date would be November 10th.
Mr Farrell (47) is a partner in McCann Fitzgerald, which employs some 300 people in Dublin, London, Brussels and New York. He is not one of the 14 appeals authorities who have been hearing appeals against the initial decisions of the Department of Justice on applications for asylum. About a third of these initial decisions have been overturned by the appeals authorities.
The post of chairperson of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal is a statutory position. It was created under the Refugee Act, which was amended by last year's Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Act. This provides for the appointment of a chairperson through the Civil Service Appointments Commission.
The role of the chairperson is to allocate work to the members of the tribunal, develop a system of quality control and hear appeals. It is understood there were competitive interviews for the post.