Peadar Tóibín
Question:247. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Justice the number of asylum seekers who have registered for asylum in Ireland for each of the past ten years, including each month of 2024. [17161/24]
View answerThursday, 18 April 2024
Questions (247)
Written answers
I can confirm that my Department takes all necessary steps to manage the international protection process efficiently and effectively, while ensuring the integrity of those processes is maintained at all times.
Making sure that applications are processed quickly means those who need our protection are given the opportunity to re-build their life in Ireland in a timely manner. It also means that those who do not qualify, return to their country of origin.
My Department have taken a significant number of measures to increase the capacity of the international protection system.
In November 2022, I introduced an accelerated procedure for international protection applicants from designated safe countries of origin. These applicants now typically receive a first instance decision in less than three months, a significant reduction from a norm of 22 to 26 months in recent years. For the year up to 31 January 2024 the number of applications from safe countries has reduced by more than 50% compared to previous 12 month period.
In July 2023, I published a report on the international protection modernisation programme for 2023 and 2024. This programme involved unparalleled investment in staff, panel members, reengineered processes, and technology. We have implemented measures to improve efficiencies and throughput as well as enhancing the application, interview and decision-making process for applicants.
One of the priority areas of focus has been to recruit both civil servants and panel members, to increase case processing. The International Protection Office now has over 400 staff, an increase of 95% over 2022. The IPO made 2,482 first instance determinations in 2021, 4323 in 2022, 9,000 in 2023 and are confident of delivering over 14,000 decisions this year.
These reforms and increased staff numbers are having a significant impact with the median processing time for all first-instance decisions reducing from 18 months in 2022 down to 13 months in 2023. The median processing time for appeals was 5.5 months in 2023 down from 13.5 months at the start of 2022.
Reforms to the international protection process will continue in 2024. Approximately €34m additional funding was allocated in Budget 2024 to the International Protection Office (IPO) and the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) to continue to scale up processing. These measures, and all other aspects of the international protection modernisation programme will continue to be kept under review and improved on a continuous ongoing basis.
The increasing numbers of protection applications seen below highlight the importance of the EU Asylum and Migration Pact for Ireland. I recently secured Cabinet approval to seek the necessary approvals from the Houses of the Oireachtas to opt-in to the Pact. The overall objectives of the Pact is to create a fair, sustainable and efficient asylum procedure in ordinary times as well as in times of migratory pressure and crisis situations. It will harmonise asylum procedures across the EU, and speed up the processing of asylum applications so that people in need of our protection get it quickly and those who don’t are returned to their country of origin efficiently.
Please note that although the Deputy has asked for figures from 2015 onwards, statistics pre-2017 are not readily available in the manner sought, as data would have to be extracted from a number of legacy systems. With the introduction of the International Protection Act in 2016 and the creation of the International Protection Office, a new database allows for easier collation of data in more recent years therefore we have provided figures from 2017 onwards only.
The table below details the number of International Protection applications received since 2017.
|
Year |
Month |
Total |
|
2017 |
|
2,920 |
|
2018 |
|
3,674 |
|
2019 |
|
4,782 |
|
2020 |
|
1,566 |
|
2021 |
|
2,648 |
|
2022 |
|
13,646 |
|
2023 |
|
13,272 |
|
2024* |
|
6,069 |
|
January |
1,773 |
|
|
February |
1,569 |
|
|
March |
1,821 |
|
|
April* |
906 |
*To COB 12th April 2024. Please note, figures are correct at time of issue, however, all statistics may be subject to data cleansing.