Justice official queries asylum motives

The secretary general of the Department of Justice has said that the vast majority of asylum seekers coming to Ireland were economic migrants seeking to better themselves and their families and that in doing so were invariably prepared to "lie through their teeth".

Appearing before the Dáil Public Accounts Committee yesterday, Seán Aylward said the State had paid around €1.1 billion over the last three years in providing services across various Government departments for asylum seekers.

Figures released after the hearing by the Department of Justice revealed average annual expenditure of around €370 million in 2003, 2004 and 2005 on State services for asylum seekers.

The department paid around €75-€80 million each year in accommodation costs for asylum seekers.

The figures also showed that in 2004 the Department of Social and Family Affairs paid €157 million to asylum seekers; the Department of Health incurred costs of €64 million; and the Department of Education ran up bills of €24 million.

Mr Aylward said the majority of asylum seekers were economic migrants who were coming from poverty and that he did not want to demonise them.

He said the economic migrants, in seeking to better themselves and their families would "invariably lie through their teeth".

He said the State had to take a tough stance and that this would be getting tougher in the future.

He said that between 1992 and 2006, 69,652 people had applied for asylum in Ireland.

A total of 8,274 people had been granted asylum here over the same period.

Around 10,000 additional people who had been in the asylum process at some stage had been granted leave to remain in Ireland on the basis that they had an Irish-born child.

The committee heard that 2,600 of the 12,300 deportation orders issued by the department had been implemented.

More than 7,100 people were considered to be evading deportation, although Mr Aylward said the majority of these were believed to have left the State.

The committee also heard that there were around 500 judicial review cases in train against deportation attempts. Mr Aylward said asylum applicants who had been turned down in the process had generous right of access to the courts until the last minute before deportation, and that the State was subject to "legal ambush right up to the steps of the plane".

He also said that one of the ironies of the current system was that many people who claimed they had fled their home country were continually seeking re-entry visas to allow them to return there.

Mr Aylward said the impact of the Government decision in 1999 to allow some asylum seekers to work had been "catastrophic".

He also expressed caution about moves to publish details of asylum applications and appeal decisions.

He said there was a view that if a complete picture was presented of the type of argument that would succeed in securing asylum in Ireland, then there would be a risk that a lot of people would come here with the same story.

He said Ireland had been caught "flat-footed" when asylum seekers began arriving in large numbers in the late 1990s.

He said the State had subsequently invested significant resources and that waiting lists had been reduced considerably.

For people from priority countries, the asylum process could be completed within six weeks.

The chief executive of the Irish Refugee Council, Peter O'Mahony, said Mr Aylward's remarks were "without foundation" and couched in irresponsible language that would "clearly fuel hostility".

"While that might suit the Government's agenda in the short term, it serves nobody's interest over the longer term," he said.