9 March 2006

Justice

Failed Asylum Seekers awaiting other decisions 

Ciarán Cuffe asked the Minister:  the number of people who sought asylum prior to 1 January 2001, were refused asylum and are awaiting a decision on their application for leave to remain here on humanitarian or other grounds; and if he will make a statement on the matter. 

Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Mr. McDowell):  I presume that the Deputy is referring to applications for leave to remain in the State made pursuant to section 3 of the Immigration Act 1999, as amended.

It must be acknowledged that it is particularly difficult to provide meaningful statistics for the time period cited in the question given the transitional nature of asylum and deportation system at the time. First, the Immigration Act 1999 was implemented in November 1999 and, second, the full provisions of the Refugee Act 1996, as amended, came into effect on 20 November 2000, that is, the date on which the two independent refugee status determination bodies, the refugee applications commissioner and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, were established on a statutory basis.

Generally, an application for leave to remain in the State in these circumstances arises where a non-national is served with a notice of intent to deport under section 3(3)(a) of the Immigration Act 1999. A person served with such a notice of intent to deport is afforded three options, namely, to leave the State voluntarily; to consent to the making of a deportation order; or to make representations in writing within 15 working days setting out reasons as to why a deportation order should not be made and why temporary leave to remain in the State be granted instead.

In the period 1992 to 31 December 2000, 29,266 persons applied for asylum and, in the same period 1,815 were granted refugee status. It is important to note that decisions relating to asylum applications are recorded by reference to the date of the decision-determination rather than the date of application. Hence, the number of decisions-determinations made each year may not necessarily relate to applications made in the same year and many of the applicants in that period had their asylum applications decided in subsequent years.

Details of those granted leave to remain in the period 2000 to date in the context of the deportation system under the Immigration Act 1999 are as follows:   
    

As with the asylum application statistics above, the year in which a person is granted leave to remain is usually not the same as the year in which they sought asylum.

It does not follow that a failed asylum seeker is automatically either issued with a deportation order or is granted leave to remain and the above statistics need to be examined in that context. Temporary leave is considered regardless of whether representations have been made by, or on behalf of, the person concerned. Consequently, records are not maintained which would distinguish the number of cases where representations have been received from those where no representations have been made. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that many of those who failed the asylum process, and who did not opt to return voluntarily on notification to the Department or consent to deportation, nonetheless left the State of their own volition before a decision to deport or grant leave to remain was made.

Further, many persons who applied for asylum in the period concerned have since received alternate forms of leave to remain outside the process in the Immigration Act 1999 described above. For example, some may have married Irish or EU nationals and many would have been granted leave to remain based on their parentage of an Irish born child. In this latter respect, 10,584 persons were granted leave to remain based on their parentage of an Irish born child under the procedure which operated prior to the Supreme Court judgment in the L&O case in January 2003 and a further 16,693 were granted under the subsequent IBC, 2005, scheme.

It should be noted that under section 3(6) of the Act the Minister, in determining whether to make a deportation order or grant leave to remain shall have regard to 11 specified considerations, one of which is the length of time a person has spent in the State.