I am informed by the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS) of my Department that each application under Family Reunification under Section 18 of the Refugee Act is investigated by the Office of the Refugee Application Commissioner. In general, reasons for refusing a family reunification application
include failure to establish identity, failure to establish a family link between the refugee and the person applied for, and polygamous marriage arrangements.
The information requested by the Deputy is set out in the table for the period 2012 to date. Data prior to 2012 is not readily available and would take a disproportionate amount of staff resource time to compile diverting them away from case processing.
Year
|
Number of applications processed
|
Overall number of Refusals
|
Refusals for Syrian applicants
|
2012
|
793
|
365
|
1
|
2013
|
574
|
310
|
15
|
2014
|
287
|
69
|
7
|
2015
|
531
|
186
|
24
|
2016 (to end Sept.)
|
332
|
103
|
16
|