As the longest-serving member of the independent authority which hears appeals from people who have been refused the right to remain in the State by the Department of Justice, Peter Finlay is uniquely qualified to pass judgment on the present situation.

So serious are his criticisms of the current system of dealing with asylum applicants that he concludes their rights are being trammelled.

Finlay, a practising barrister for 14 years, is one of five lawyers appointed by the Government to the Independent Appeals Authority. Sitting on a part-time basis, he has heard some 400 appeals in the past 18 months, about half of those dealt with by the authority in that period.

About 90 per cent of asylum applications fail at the first stage, following an interview with a Department of Justice official. According to Finlay, about one third of these decisions are overturned upon appeal to the authority.

He is concerned that in many of the cases he has heard, people have not had free and independent legal advice from the outset of the asylum procedure.

The abuse of asylum-seekers' rights, according to Finlay, starts when they enter the Refugee Application Centre at Mount Street to claim refugee status under the 1951 UN Geneva Convention. By making such an application, people are seeking asylum. If they are granted this, they become refugees.

Asylum-seekers must initially complete a detailed questionnaire, and Finlay said most do so without accessing free legal advice from the Refugee Legal Service, an off-shoot of the Legal Aid Board. This is despite the fact that they are told a free legal aid service is available.

The next stage, months or years later, is an interview with a Department of Justice official in Mount Street. "They have not been in the past, in my experience, accompanied by a solicitor or a legal adviser, except in exceptional cases," Finlay said.

Many of the interviewers are retired gardai and the interviews consequently "have all the hallmarks of a Garda interview in a station. But the one main ingredient is missing: these people are not being accused or charged with any offence."

This interview is critically important, yet he wondered if applicants understand exactly what it is they are embarking on. If the application for refugee status is refused following this interview, the person can appeal to the Independent Appeals Authority. The applicants always have legal representation at this stage of the process.

Finlay said he has been alarmed at some of the decisions taken by the department after the first-stage interview, which in his view would not bear up to public scrutiny.

"The legal standards applied to them are lower than would be applied to Irish people and their fundamental rights are not observed during the asylum process," he said.

"They are embarking on what is ostensibly a legal decision at the end of the day on whether they have a right to refugee status here or be exposed to repatriation or return and I think, the consequences being so serious for them, that it behoves us to apply, at the very least, the same standards we would apply to our own people."

Mr Finlay said he had heard of solicitors who had accompanied asylum-seekers to the first interview and had been told that they were not allowed to intervene, but could make a submission at the end of the interview.

He said the Refugee Legal Service, an off-shoot of the Legal Aid Board, has many very bright solicitors who do excellent work, but could not claim to be truly independent. This is because the Legal Aid Board's board is appointed by the Minister for Justice. The fact that the service's offices are in the same building as the Department of Justice and the Refugee Applications Centre in Mount Street, was also off-putting for many people, he added.

Mr Finlay said a separate legal service, with no connections to the Legal Aid Board should be set up, and located in another building. He said he was not naive about exploitation and people trafficking, but was highly critical of Government plans to fingerprint asylum-seekers aged older than 14 and replace cash payments with food vouchers.

"I believe it's a total and complete travesty to have a system of the type I have described; the questionnaire, the interview and the lack of truly independent legal advice at the appeal hearing accompanied by imminent finger printing and proposals for food vouchers," he said.

"All of this in my view rings hollow as a humanitarian response to peoples' needs. Not just for people coming here, but our needs as a society. They bear all the hallmarks of a narrow and prejudiced state of mind."

Mr Finlay said an amnesty, rather than the appointment of additional lawyers to sit as appeals authorities, was the best way to deal with the backlog of some 8,000 asylum cases.

He said he was not in favour of the "perilous" course of mass deportations of those who fail to get refugee status, a move which, he said, would "convulse" the State.

He predicted legal impediments for the Minister for Justice in this year's Refugee Act in carrying out deportations.

"I think rather than going to a collision course with jets hovering over Dublin airport waiting to pick up collections of strange looking families, it might be preferable to just calmly reconsider the question of allowing a certain number, whether it's 5,000 or 10,000, to stay in the country, and then sit down and plan a strategy for the next five to 10 years into the next millennium."

Mr Finlay said efficient controls at ports and airports should be combined with an immigration authority entirely separate from the Department of Justice.