Allowing the Ombudsman to ensure that fair procedures are applied in immigration decisions would reduce High Court waiting lists, argues Nasc officer Claire McCarthy
Ahead of the recent general election, Ire-land’s Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly wrote to all party leaders suggesting that the powers of her office be deepened, and that her remit be expanded to include prisons, asylum, immigration and naturalisation.
The proposal will certainly be warmly welcomed by anyone who has ever negotiated Ireland’s notoriously mercurial and obscure immigration system. The Ombudsman’s proposals would reduce the costs to the State of High Court judicial review proceedings, which are currently the only means of reviewing decisions made by Department of Justice officials in respect of asylum, immigration, and naturalisation applications.
Half of the cases currently awaiting judicial review are immigration related. Applicants are waiting almost two years to ask a High Court judge whether the decision in their case was made properly.
The Ombudsman believes that there is a public demand that government, and its institutions, must be “fair, effective and accountable”. She believes that her office can do a lot to ensure “consistency and fairness in the application of the law”.
At the moment, members of the public can make a complaint to the Ombudsman about the administrative actions of certain Government depart-ments, the HSE, Local Authorities and An Post. So if a civil servant makes an unfair decision, the Ombudsman can intervene to restore fair procedures.
Recently a High Court judge quashed a decision by Department of Justice officials to refuse to issue a residency card to the Turkish husband of an EU citizen resident in Ireland. The original decision was made on the basis that the officials did not have sufficient evidence that the man’s wife was in employment.
The judge held that there had been no valid reason for refusing the application. Instead of asking for more evidence, a civil servant issued a refusal, and the department refused to review the decision.
This kind of decision-making vindicates the Ombudsman’s belief that “there is little evidence that the improvements in public administration generally… have been a feature of the administration of [all issues relating to immigration, refugees, asylum seekers, and naturalisation] which have remained outside of the Ombudsman’s remit.”
At Nasc, a non-governmental information and advocacy service for immigrants based in Cork, we deal with some 3,000 visits to our legal clinics every year. Even our highly educated clients are stumped by the lack of information available about what is expected of them in dealing with the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS).
We could fill a book with examples of the kind of unfair procedures the Ombudsman refers to, but one example will suffice here: in 2009, it’s alleged that a high number of the 27,000 long-term residents of Ireland who applied for citizenship received a generic letter of refusal, devoid of any meaningful explanation for the decision, and including the information that there is no method of appeal.
It is virtually impossible to contact the office by telephone, and written enquiries are dealt with by means of obscure, generic replies. Applicants have no choice but to apply again, and remain in the dark about what rules govern the decision-making process.
All of the parties are making noises about transparency and fairness. One can only hope that, whether they find themselves in power or in opposition, that they will not miss the opportunity presented by the current mood for reform to act on what this champion of transparency and fairness has to say.
Claire McCarthy is policy and campaigning officer of Cork-based Nasc, The Irish Immigrant Support Centre.
