A Europe-wide fingerprint database, which will allow authorities to check whether new asylum-seekers in the Republic have already made claims in other EU countries, will begin operating today.
The Eurodac database is aimed at helping to stamp out immigration fraud and "asylum shopping", where people make applications for refugee status in more than one EU country.
It will provide for instant checks of the fingerprints of newly-arrived asylum-seekers against records in other EU states.
If the print-matching facility shows that asylum-seekers have already made asylum claims in another EU country, they could be returned to have their claim dealt with there.
Each state will forward asylum applicants' fingerprints for comparison to the centralised electronic fingerprint register, based in Luxembourg, which will be operated by the European Commission.
This data can be compared with data already stored in the central database, and a response furnished to indicate whether a match exists in another EU state.
The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, said yesterday he expected the new system to reduce the ability of persons to "asylum-shop" in the EU, "and thereby make a valuable contribution towards protecting the fundamental principles of asylum and refugee status recognised by the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the status of refugees from abuse by those individuals who are not genuine refugees and who, in the main, are utilising asylum systems as a means of entering EU states for economic gain".
Asylum applicants are fingerprinted when they lodge their claims for recognition as refugees fleeing persecution at the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner in Dublin's Lower Mount Street.
Fingerprints taken for asylum purposes are not used for criminal purposes, and the asylum-seeker database is "fire-walled" from the Garda's criminal database.
The Minister said he intended to bring forward soon significant legal amendments to current refugee law to deal with misuse of the asylum process in the State.
He said 50 per cent of claims were not being pursued to finality and this tied up large amounts of resources in the asylum-processing area which could be more effectively utilised for other purposes, such as integration initiatives for refugees.