I would be happy to do that. An analogy is often used by those who manage people in custody, although this is not a custodial situation, to distinguish between a stock of people and a flow. The flow of applicants has lessened in response to many factors on which I will not dwell, but the stock of people has continued to build as fresh asylum seekers have been added to the group of people going through the appeals process or trying new routes towards being given permission to stay in the country. They have moved beyond the asylum seeking process because it ran out for them and all of their appeals, up to and including judicial reviews, have taken their course. They then take route two, in which they seek humanitarian leave to remain and every conceivable form of appeal to review the process. This has led to the current stock.
On 21 October of the year under review, the Government agreed to a new round of value for money reviews up to 2011. The Department's asylum seeker accommodation unit was chosen to be the subject of the review of the Vote's expenditure programmes. The review is ongoing and its results will be presented to the Oireachtas upon completion. The steering committee is working on it.
Last year, the Department's refugee integration unit refunded the HSE the voucher cost of accommodating unaccompanied minors in the Dublin area, amounting to some €3.17 million. In 2009, some €3.5 million was transferred from Vote 19 to the HSE's Vote to remedy a situation in which we had financial, but not operational or contractual, responsibility for the accommodation of unaccompanied minors. We were a price taker rather than a price maker. During the years in which we had a problem with accommodating older asylum seekers and their families, we went to the market in a competitive process and got rates per night that were a fraction of what would have been charged in other circumstances, such as in bed and breakfast accommodation.
The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has accepted responsibility on behalf of the State to house homeless people who have pitched up on our shores and over whose heads we have an obligation to put roofs. If they were taken into the conventional local authority housing system, for example, and houses were built for them, the cost would be in the stratosphere. As most of the claims have proven to be ill-founded, that would have been inappropriate spending. We are carrying that cross for the rest of the public administration. Traditionally, this would not have been our business. Rather, we housed people sent to us by the courts. However, we have accepted this responsibility as the people who can discharge it most efficiently because we have some control over the flow of people outwards.
Holding down costs and accelerating the system will be a continuous struggle, but our proposals to streamline the applications process, particularly where ill-founded applications are concerned, are before the Oireachtas. The legislation proposes a complete re-engineering whereby people who apply for asylum will need to put everything on the table immediately, that is, all conceivable grounds that they would ever wish to cite to be allowed to remain in Ireland. These would be dealt with simultaneously and immediately. Currently, the net effect is the stringing out of our process. People are exercising their rights under current law in an adept way. It is a matter of making applications at the last possible minute on the last possible day and frustrating the system. I do not want to be inflammatory, but I have previously cited before the House applications for stays and so forth being made on the steps of the aeroplane. This is the sort of thing with which we must contend. Many people have a vested interest in stringing out the process. Through our Minister, the Government has tabled legislation to tighten up the situation before the Oireachtas.
The courts are continually confronted with applications for review that prolong the stays of the people in those settings. Of the 7,000 people we are housing, approximately 1,500 have been in that accommodation for longer than three years. It is not the case that the Department has lost their files, they have not been processed or they have not been giving hearings. It is simply the case that they have repeatedly invoked new avenues of appeal. It is a long and difficult process and, when all lines of appeal are at an end and every court in the land has repeatedly rejected the cases, people must be expelled from the country if they will not return to their own countries voluntarily. This can be problematic with certain states.