Some 85 per cent of asylum-seekers in Ireland were not fleeing persecution but seeking a better life, it was claimed at the Parnell Summer School in Rathdrum, Co Wicklow.
Mr Peter Finlay SC said yesterday he had sat on the Government Appeals Board for 18 months listening to appeals by people turned down for asylum, and had then resigned because of criticisms of the system.
He spoke of some people who had come before him, specifically those from Zaire, where a civil war was in progress. He pointed out that most victims never leave their country, which meant "many of the people who do leave are former military or the people who can raise the money to make it to Ireland".
The Government policy on asylum and immigration, he said, would fail because it was based on the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, introduced to encourage defectors from Eastern Europe to the West after the second World War.
