Tuesday, MORE than €1.2 million was paid out by the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner (ORAC) to lawyers of asylum seekers suing the state for refusing to allow them to stay in the country.
The figures, contained in ORAC’s annual report say the payments were made in respect of “judicial reviews settled or lost” in 2010.

The organisation is the first-instance decision-making body in the Irish asylum system. Its job is to investigate applications from people seeking refugee status and to issue appropriate recommendations to the minister for justice.

Asylum application numbers are at levels last seen in the mid-1990s with just 1,939 applications for refugee status received in 2010, down 28% from 2009, the annual report states.

The number of applications averaged at 162 per month and ORAC said “significant progress” was made last year in relation to the processing of applications with a total of 2,192 cases finalised.

At the end of the year, there were some 541 cases on hands, 67 cases of which were on hand for over 6 months.

The top five applicant countries for 2010 accounted for 49.3% of applications. As was the case in 2009, Nigeria was the top applicant country accounting for some 20% of all applicants.

This was followed by China (11.8%), Pakistan (10.3%), the Democratic Republic of Congo (3.7%) and Afghanistan (3.6%).

In 2010, 37 applications were received from unaccompanied minors seeking asylum, which accounted for 1.9% of the total number of applications received.

Also during 2010, 112 legal challenges were taken against ORAC compared with 92 cases during 2009.

ORAC sent 1,515 sets of fingerprints of asylum applicants to an EU fingerprinting system with 208 hits, showing those applicants had previously made asylum applications in other states.

ORAC has come under fire, however, as it refuses 98% of asylum claims, with the European norm for acceptance at 25%.

Asylum seekers then appeal which brings them to a lengthy and costly process known as RAT, the Refugee Appeals Tribunal (RAT).
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This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Tuesday, July 05, 2011 By Jennifer Hough