The quality of many decisions in refugee cases remained "highly questionable," the Irish Refugee Council has said. It is concerned that almost a quarter of rejected applications for refugee status were overturned on appeal in the first five months of this year.
"While it is important that the Government meets its own target of definitively processing asylum applications in six months, this must not be at the expense of quality," said Mr Dug Cubie, the council's legal officer. "The quality of the legal analysis on which decisions are made is a major cause of concern. Something is clearly wrong when four out of 10 recognised refugees have been refused recognition at first instance. The result is a needless waste of resources as well as causing unnecessary stress on already vulnerable people."
Mr Cubie said a report by the council last September had shown a "disturbingly low" quality of decision-making at the initial application stage.
He said that seven months after the responsibility for handling initial applications had been taken over by an independent Refugee Applications Commissioner, some decisions were still highly questionable. This was shown where almost a quarter of all "first instance" decisions were overturned by the independent Refugee Appeals Tribunal this year until the end of May.
Current processing time for refugee applications ranges from three to 19 months, according to the office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner.
The council's criticisms come on the 50th anniversary today of the main global treaty for the protection of refugees, the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. This sets out basic refugee rights and includes a world-wide definition of a refugee as someone who is fleeing persecution on grounds including race, religion, nationality or membership of a social group. Applicants for refugee status are called asylum-seekers. People granted refugee status are entitled to live and work permanently in the Republic, while those refused are liable to be deported.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr Ruud Lubbers, will today raise concerns that some of the convention's key provisions are being questioned and even openly flouted by a growing number of states.