Last week saw another mass deportation of failed asylum seekers. It emerged also that a Nigerian asylum seeker had been called to a meeting with the Garda National Immigration Bureau just a day before he was due to sit his Leaving Certificate exams. These events are taking place against a backdrop of the Minister for Justice last month telling an Oireachtas committee that "unfortunately" he was required by the UN Convention to go through due process in dealing with asylum seekers.
The number of people seeking asylum in Ireland has fallen dramatically over the last two years. Greater numbers are now being turned back at our ports and airports without ever having an opportunity to lodge an application. More resources have been put into the processing of applications, so that fewer are now waiting for months or even years without their case being dealt with. The fact that we are no longer overwhelmed by an unanticipated volume of asylum applications makes it imperative that the system is fair and transparent and seen to be so.
Unfortunately, there is little transparency in the asylum system, especially where the majority of applications are granted - in the Refugee Appeals Tribunal. Asylum seekers apply to the tribunal when their initial application is rejected by the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, as about 95 per cent are. About 10 per cent of those who appeal are granted refugee status. However, there is growing concern among professionals working in the area about the fairness and transparency of the process. As we outline in today's Agenda section, there is a perception among lawyers specialising in asylum cases that certain individual members of the tribunal are more likely to grant appeals than others, irrespective of the merits of the case. This has led to legal challenges to some decisions of the tribunal. The most recent concerns its refusal to publish its prior decisions, which would indicate the development of the interpretation of Irish refugee law. It emerged during this case that Ireland is the only common law country that does not publish the decisions of its refugee appeals bodies. The decisions of British or Canadian appeals tribunals can be cited in the Irish courts but not Irish decisions. The refusal to publish decisions, or statistics on the outcomes of cases relating to individual members of the tribunal, has fed suspicion about the tribunal's fairness. These suspicions might be entirely groundless but it is important that both asylum seekers and the Irish taxpayer, who funds the whole process, can be sure that those with a genuine fear of persecution are granted refugee status.
In that same speech to the Oireachtas committee, the Minister said that if people knew the "cock and bull stories" he was aware of, they would see the "nonsense that lies behind these bogus claims". It would be very simple to make people aware of the stories by publishing the tribunal's decisions without identifying the individual applicants. This would introduce a measure of transparency, reassuring to everyone, into the process.