Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 27 January 2021
626. Deputy Matt Shanahan asked the Minister for Justice the number of persons availing of direct provision; the number from this cohort who have applications for refugee or asylum status; the present application period averages to a finding; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [3679/21]
View answerAs the Deputy will be aware, responsibility for the Direct Provision accommodation system transferred to my colleague, Minister O'Gorman on 14 October last. My Department retains responsibility for the processing of international protection applications.
3,335 people whose applications are being examined by the International Protection Office (IPO) and 1,046 people who are at appeal stage with the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) are currently being provided with accommodation by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.
The median processing time for all international protection applications determined in 2020, by the IPO was 17.6 months and 12.7 months for prioritised applications. For cases decided in the Ministerial Decisions Unit in 2020, the median processing time was 1.6 months.
The median processing time for all international protection appeals determined in 2020, by the IPAT was 9 months.
While the figures above are correct at the time of issue, they are subject to data cleansing.
Efforts to improve processing times have been seriously impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has reduced the output of decisions considerably and has impacted on the target set by the IPO to make first instance decisions in the vast majority of cases within 9 months. The return to Level 5 restrictions from 26 December 2020, has resulted in the postponement of protection interviews until an easing of the public health measures permits their safe resumption.
I welcome the key recommendation of reducing processing times for both first instance decisions and appeals to 6 months each respectively as far as possible in line with the recommendations of the Expert Advisory Group. Work is underway in my Department towards achieving this objective, which includes an end to end process review of the international protection and related immigration processes.
Notwithstanding the progress being made on implementing the recommendations there are certain current constraints and challenges for my Department in delivering some of the recommendations of the Advisory Group for reduced processing timelines given the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on current operations.
