Madam, - It is very disturbing that it has required the resignation of two barristers from the Refugee Appeals Tribunal to highlight again some of the extremely defective and unjust procedures of this tribunal (The Irish Times, February 3rd).
It is entirely unacceptable that major reforms have not ensued in the light of Catherine Kenny's 2003 report on behalf of the Irish Refugee Council which found that only 13 per cent of lawyers who appeared before the tribunal believed there was consistency between the recommendations of its different members.
Decisions of the Irish Refugee Appeals Tribunal are often based on criteria and precedents used by the UK Immigration Appeal Tribunal. Such decisions have been shown to be seriously flawed by the Immigration Advisory Service UK in its February 2005 analysis of country guideline cases used by that tribunal.
It is scandalous that countries with human rights records as disgraceful as those of Serbia, Algeria and Zimbabwe have even had their recommendations on human rights accepted by refugee tribunals.
Mr Justice McMenamin ruled last year in the High Court that the lack of transparency in the Refugee Appeals Tribunal procedures "cannot accord with the principles of natural and constitutional justice".
Implicit in this judgment is a declaration that we are placing at grave risk the lives of some asylum-seekers who may be deported to the many countries where a cruel fate awaits them. - Yours, etc,
VALERIE HUGHES, Cabra, Dublin 7.