Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 22 November 2023
118. Deputy Pa Daly asked the Minister for Justice the dedicated staffing and financial allocations of each of the decision-making divisions/bodies in the international protection process in each of the years 2013 to 2022 and to date in 2023, in tabular form. [51348/23]
View answerA breakdown of headcount in functions involved in processing international protection applications from 2015 to 2023 up to 8 November 2023 is set out in the table below. Statistics before 2015 are not easily available in the manner sought as data would have to be extracted from a number of legacy systems.
|
- |
2015 |
2016 |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023* |
|
The International Protection Office (IPO) (Formally the Office of Refugee Applications Commissioner) |
88 |
124 |
140 |
144 |
143 |
148 |
180 |
212 |
389 |
|
International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) (formally the Refugee Appeals Tribunal) |
37 |
40 |
44 |
48 |
50 |
47 |
52 |
47 |
63 |
*As of 8 November 2023. Please note all data provided is correct at time of issue and may be subject to data cleansing.
In addition to staff, the IPO appoint appropriately qualified panel members to carry out a range of duties including carrying out interviews with applicants and producing reports detailing an applicant’s case for consideration by IPO staff. Following a comprehensive recruitment programme, the number of IPO panel members is on target to reach 160 by year end (December 2022: 72). In IPAT, full and part-time Tribunal Members consider appeals and make decisions in respect of appeals. There are 66 Tribunal Members (December 2022: 47).
In 2020 the Department of Justice implemented a transformation programme. As a result the costs from 2020 onward that are related to the international protection process are not directly comparable with the costs incurred prior to that point, as a number of expenditure areas were restructured as core departmental functions.
The table below details data on financial allocations to the International Protection Office (IPO) and the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) since 2013.
|
Year |
IPO |
IPAT |
Total |
|
|
€000's |
€000's |
€000's |
|
2013 |
4,594 |
3,980 |
8,574 |
|
2014 |
5,626 |
4,673 |
10,299 |
|
2015 |
6,095 |
3,902 |
9,996 |
|
2016 |
6,930 |
4,880 |
11,810 |
|
2017 |
7,159 |
3,793 |
10,951 |
|
2018 |
8,372 |
3,707 |
12,078 |
|
2019 |
10,314 |
4,243 |
14,557 |
|
2020 |
8,155 |
3,305 |
11,460 |
|
2021 |
8,204 |
3,370 |
11,574 |
|
2022 |
11,864 |
3,254 |
15,118 |
|
YTD SEP 2023 |
15,392 |
2,699 |
18,091 |
Notes:
As part of the 2020 transformation programme IPO salary costs were included in Immigration Service Delivery salaries and an estimated adjustment has been made to include those values.
All data provided is correct at time of issue and may be subject to data cleansing.
The Deputy may also wish to know that the Department’s website provides a detailed overview of the International Protection process in Ireland as well as monthly statistics and metrics on the processing of international protection applications. These can be accessed at:
www.gov.ie/en/campaigns/304ba-international-protection/.
www.gov.ie/en/collection/48a28-international-protection-in-numbers/.
