The number of people applying for refugee status in Ireland decreased substantially in 2010, according to the Office of the Refugee Applications Comm-issioner (Orac). Announcing the highlights of its 10th annual report, Refugee Applications Commissioner David Costello said a total 1,939 applications were received in 2010.
According to Orac: “This represents a 27.9 per cent reduction in applications compared to 2009 and asylum applications are now at levels last seen in the mid-nineties”
The commission said it also reached a milestone in the processing of applications. “A total of 2,192 cases were finalised. At the end of the year, there were some 541 cases on hand, 67 cases of which were on hand for over six months.”
Except in the later part of 2010, when processing times increased by nearly one week due to the transfer of some of the Orac’s staff to the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (Inis), the average application processing time to completion was eight-to-nine weeks.
But a number of applications were also fast-tracked and completed within 17-to-20 working days under the Ministerial Prioritisation Directive.
The commission sent about 1,515 sets of fingerprints of asylum applicants to the EU Eurodac database system with 208 hits, showing those applicants had made asylum applications in other contracting states. This is extremely low compared to the 2009 figures of 2,395 sets of fingerprints sent with 295 hits confirmed.
With 1,828 appeal hearings last year compared to 3,190 in 2009, the number of appeals against the commission’s decision heard before the Refugee Appeals Tribunal was also down.
There was a slight change in the top five applicant countries for 2010. Nigeria still tops the list at 20 per cent, followed by China (11.8%), Pakistan (10.3%), DR Congo (3.7%) and Afghanistan, which increased to 3.6 per cent, edging out Zimbabwe.
Other highlights from the Orac report include:
- 37 applications were received from unaccompanied minors seeking asylum, which accounted for 1.9 per cent of the total number of applications received.
- 130 applications were received from persons in detention in 2010. This figure constitutes 6.7 per cent of all applications received.
- 323 applications for family reunification were received from the Minister for Justice for investigation in 2010, a decrease of 28.2 per cent over the 2009 figure.
- A total of 525 asylum applications were deemed withdrawn from the process for various reasons including applicants failing to co-operate or attend for interview.
- 112 legal challenges were taken against Orac during 2010 (including 24 cases taken in relation to the Dublin II Regulation) compared with 92 cases during 2009.
