State spent €20m on asylum appeals

THE STATE spent €20 million last year on legal costs relating to asylum application appeals, the director general at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform said yesterday.

Speaking at the Dáil Public Accounts Committee, Seán Aylward also said one in 20 applications for asylum last year came from a person in prison.

Mr Aylward said there were 6,500 asylum applications in the system in 2001 and that had dropped to 2,235 at the end of February this year.

The "pull factor" of Ireland had started to decline, he said, because the process was being vigorously defended in the courts and by sharing data it was now easier to trace those who were "asylum shopping" and had already applied for asylum in other countries.

However, the number of deportations had also dropped, from a high of 599 in 2004 to 135 in 2007. Tens of thousands of deportation orders were made, Mr Aylward said, but they were being frustrated by the legal system.

He said in 2007 €10 million was spent by the Refugee Legal Service to fund asylum seekers in their actions against the State and a further €10 million was paid by the State to defend its position.

Darragh O'Brien TD asked why every asylum seeker did not take legal action if it cost nothing. "A good many do," Mr Aylward said.

He said 225 people applied for asylum from prison in 2007 and he pointed out that if a person has a well-founded fear of persecution in his own country he could apply for asylum whether he was "a violinist, an opera singer or a murderer".

He said 90 per cent of asylum seekers do not apply for asylum at the border, but turn up in Mount Street. Most claimed they had travelled by air, but in reality most came from the UK having entered there legally on visitor or worker permits, he said.

He added when every legal route was exhausted with an asylum application, the person often reapplied for leave to remain on humanitarian grounds "and the clock goes back to zero".

He said proposed new legislation, the Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill 2008, would require applicants to set down any other grounds on which they would make their application to stay in Ireland, eliminating the ability to "set the clock back".

Mr Aylward also defended the quality of accommodation for asylum seekers in Ireland.