THE REFUGEE Appeals Tribunal is at the centre of controversy again. It has emerged that three of its most senior members were preparing to challenge in court a statement made by its chairman to the Supreme Court.
This arose in the context of a court case alleging bias against one tribunal member, James Nicholson, who resigned late last year when the action against him was settled before it could go to a full hearing. In the Supreme Court judgment requiring the production of statistics, Mrs Justice Susan Denham found that a statement of the chairman of the tribunal, John Ryan, was unsupported by any evidence. The full hearing, had it gone ahead, would have entailed an examination of the record of Mr Nicholson in deciding close to 1,000 appeals, almost all of which he is reported to have rejected. It would have entailed also looking at statistics on the decisions of other tribunal members and examining the basis on which cases are allocated to members by the chairman, Mr Ryan.
And, as we now know, Mr Ryan's claim that Mr Nicholson's record was not at variance with that of other members of the tribunal would have been vigorously contested in court by other members of the tribunal, including former director of public prosecutions Eamonn Barnes and former government minister Michael O'Kennedy. The fact that the case was settled rather than going to a full hearing suggests that, once again, the tribunal chose secrecy over transparency in its dealings with asylum seekers and in its accountability to the Irish taxpayer. This is not the first time that the tribunal has resisted attempts, including those of its own members, to find out the basis on which cases are allocated to members, the principles on which decisions are based, the records of individual members and the contents of decisions. Both the High Court and the Supreme Court found that its approach to the latter matter breached natural and constitutional justice.
The Refugee Appeals Tribunal disappeared in the Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill, introduced by former minister for justice Michael McDowell, to be replaced by a Protection Review Tribunal. However, the most recent version of the Bill provides for the tribunal chairman to become the chairman of the new body. Presumably this will result in the continuation of the same policies and underlying philosophy in relation to accountability, transparency and fair procedures. The credibility of the new body rests on there being no continuity between it and the old.