The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr Michael McDowell, today said he intends to uphold "the letter of the law" for those that need "our protection" through asylum and to enforce the law where the asylum process is abused.
He added that Ireland's asylum system is extremely fair and considered in some places to be a model system.
Mr McDowell said: "There's no point in having a system if the message coming out is that it makes no difference whether you're a legitimate asylum seeker or not. An integrated approach has to be taken for it to be a fair system."
Speaking in Dublin Castle at the publication of the first annual report of the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, Mr McDowell said that the asylum process was being substantially abused. He said that 80 per cent of those who apply are not entitled to refugee status.
However, Mr McDowell went to great lengths to point out that "thousands of non-nationals have immigrated into this state. I want to emphasise that the vast majority of immigrants....are here for the purpose of work or study. No one, therefore, should make assumptions about a person’s legal entitlement to reside in this State because of skin colour, or the fact that he or she speaks a language other than English".
He also praised the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner for the progress they had made in the processing of applications for asylum. The Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner has reduced considerably the number of applications that are six months old and intends by the end of the year to process all applications between two and three months.