Clampdown on 'asylum shopping'

Almost one in four foreign nationals who have claimed asylum here since the beginning of the year were found to have lodged asylum claims in other European countries.

The practice, known as "asylum shopping", is now the subject of a major Garda clampdown, with Minister for Justice Michael McDowell vowing to "intensify the drive against unfounded and untruthful asylum applicants".

New Garda figures obtained by The Irish Times reveal that of the 1,639 newly registered asylum seekers who arrived in the State this year, 393 were found to have applied for asylum elsewhere.

If that trend continues in the second half of the year, the number of "asylum shoppers" arriving in the Republic this year will be almost double last year's number. In the whole of last year, 426 newly arrived asylum seekers were found to have registered in other countries.

In the majority of cases the individuals' applications in other EU countries had either failed or were about to fail at the final stages of appeal.

Gardaí have already deported 209 so-called asylum shoppers this year under an international convention known as Dublin II.

This allows for asylum seekers to be deported to the country they last left for Ireland. Of the 209, 144 were sent back to Britain.

Sources said these deportations, which normally involve gardaí accompanying those involved across the Irish Sea on ferries, are set to intensify in coming months.

News of the high numbers coming to Ireland to make second and, in some cases, third and fourth, claims comes just weeks after the secretary general of the Department of Justice, Seán Aylward, was criticised after he told the Public Accounts Committee that most asylum seekers were not genuine and would "lie through their teeth".

The day after Mr Aylward made his comments, UN assistant high commissioner Erika Feller, on a visit to Dublin, said it was "crucial that . . . public officials avoid all terminology which could lead to a mischaracterisation of the problem or the people who are part of it".

Senior Garda sources told The Irish Times that more so-called asylum shoppers than ever were now being detected here because tracking technology in Ireland and throughout the EU was now much more advanced.

Fingerprints are taken from all new asylum seekers on arrival in the State. These can be checked with a European print database - Eurodac - that will reveal if an individual has lodged asylum claims in other European countries.

"What we're seeing now in Ireland is part of a growing problem of people failing in one country and simply disappearing off the radar there and turning up in a new country with a new application and hoping to buy themselves more time," said one Garda source.

While the up-to-date figures for asylum seekers who have lodged asylum claims in other European countries have not been revealed before now, Mr McDowell last week said the practice was a "clear abuse" of our asylum process.

He revealed in a reply to a Dáil question that 80 per cent of people claiming asylum here last year had failed to produce identification. This figure included 80 per cent of all Nigerian and Romanian applicants and nearly 90 per cent of all applicants from Somalia, Sudan and Iran.

"The fact remains that with no direct flights between the countries I have mentioned and Ireland," Mr McDowell said, "the inescapable conclusion is that destruction and concealment of travel documents is a central feature of a well-developed trafficking strategy."

This concealment and the numbers involved in so-called asylum shopping illustrated the "large majority" of applicants are "simply not credible", proving that Mr Aylward's comments to PAC "frankly and honestly reflected reality".