THE NUMBER of people seeking asylum here continued to fall last year with the highest proportion of applicants now coming from Nigeria, figures just published show.
The statistic from the Department of Justice show that 3,866 people applied for asylum last year compared with 3,985 applications in 2007, a fall of about 3 per cent.
They also show that when deportations, transfers and voluntary repatriations are taken together, 952 people who were illegally in the State left last year - a 23 per cent increase on the 2007 figure.
Applications for asylum peaked in 2002 when there were 11,634. Since then the numbers have gone down every year; since 2006 the annual number has been about one-third of that in 2002.
The top five countries from where the applicants came last year were Nigeria (26.1 per cent), Pakistan (6.1 per cent), Iraq (5.3 per cent), Georgia (4.7 per cent) and China (4.7 per cent).
These were also the main countries in 2007.
There were 162 deportations to non-EU countries last year and 271 transfers back to other EU states. These transfers were made under the terms of the Dublin II Regulation, according to which an asylum applicant from outside the EU must make their application in the first EU state in which they land.
In addition to these, 519 people who would otherwise have been deported chose to be assisted with returning home voluntarily. This compares with 416 people who opted for voluntary repatriation in 2007.
Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said the continuing decline in applications was due to the "ongoing implementation of strategies aimed at combating abuse of the asylum process.
"This allows the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service to continue to focus on other areas of its operations, such as processing applications for visas and citizenship, continuing to increase the effectiveness of returns strategies [deportations] and immigration-related functions," Mr Ahern added.
He also referred to aspects of the asylum process that had become more efficient, including the fact that asylum applications from some nationalities were being prioritised and processed in under 20 days.
"Further reductions in asylum numbers and processing times are likely under the new single procedure . . . This will lead to the removal of the existing multi-layered and sequential process. This will allow an applicant to get a final decision on their application in a more timely and efficient manner."
Figures from the Courts Service, also published yesterday, show there were 780 asylum cases due before the courts, with dates for hearing assigned to 240 of them.
A spokesman for the service said the High Court was hearing about 17 asylum cases a week, while during the past three months, up to four High Court judges were hearing asylum cases at any one time.
He predicted the numbers of cases awaiting dates would fall as the High Court was disposing of "slightly more" cases than were being started.
