THE Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, and her Minister of State, Ms Joan Burton, have disagreed over which of them has responsibility for implementing long-delayed legislation dealing with asylum seekers coming to Ireland.
Asked yesterday why the Refugee Act, which was passed by the Dail a year ago, had still not been implemented, a spokeswoman for Mrs Owen said it was not her responsibility. She referred the inquiry from The Irish Times to Ms Burton, who is Minister for State for Justice and Foreign Affairs.
However, according to Ms Burton's office, the Labour Party minister was given the job of drawing up the legislation and piloting it through the Dail. She was not responsible for implementing it Mrs Owen was.
The 12 month delay in implementing the legislation, which will speed up the processing of applications for asylum, has contributed to a massive backlog of cases. More than 2,000 refugees are waiting for a decision on their applications, some of them for up to six years.
Ms Burton is understood to be unhappy that she has been blamed by Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats for not implementing the Act when, she maintains, it was not her responsibility.
Opposition politicians have accused her of allowing illegal immigrants to "flood" into Ireland.
Meanwhile, the Green Party has accused candidates from Fianna Fail and the PDs of trying to score political points over the influx of refugees by "pandering to racist elements in Irish society".
Under the Refugee Act, an independent refugee applications commissioner is to be appointed; interviews for the post are being held this week.
Currently, applications for asylum are handled by the Department of Justice, which contracts this work to the UN High Commission for Refugees in London. Up to this year, it took an average of three years to deal with each case.
The Act also provides for the setting up of an appeals board to deal with rejected applications. Asylum seekers will also have a right to appeal to the Minister for Justice for humanitarian leave to stay in Ireland if their application is unsuccessful in the first two stages.
Some of the delay in implementing the legislation is due to the Irish Presidency of the EU, which took up much of the workload of Department of Justice officials in the second half of last year.
However, further delay has been caused by disagreement between the Department and the Attorney General's office over the exact form of legal representation to be granted to asylum seekers.
The Department plans to give limited legal representation to asylumseekers through the free legal aid centres. The Attorney General has objected, however, saying commercial solicitors should have a right to represent asylum seekers.
"But if every refugee could go to a commercial solicitor, it would break the bank," one Department official said.
