Minister McEntee welcomes confirmation of Ireland’s participation in the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum
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From: Department of Justice
- Published on: 2 August 2024
- Last updated on: 2 August 2024
The Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has welcomed this week’s European Commission decisions confirming Ireland’s opt-in to seven of the legislative measures in the EU Asylum and Migration Pact.
Minister McEntee said:
"I warmly welcome the formal confirmation by the European Commission of Ireland’s participation in the Pact.
“EU migration is a shared European challenge, and the Pact will greatly assist Ireland to continue taking an active role in managing migration in Europe, securing national and EU borders, and ensuring our asylum systems are cohesive, fair, and efficient.
“I will continue to work with fellow EU States to protect our borders and tackle secondary movement. This can only be achieved by harmonising EU asylum procedures and processes under the Pact.”
New legislation will be introduced to repeal and replace the International Protection Act 2015. This legislation will pass through the Dáil and the Seanad and will be subject to full debate and scrutiny in each house.
The legislative changes will provide for:
• the full repeal of the International Protection Act 2015.
• legally binding timeframes for making decisions on international protection applications and appeals.
• a greater focus on efficient returns for unsuccessful applicants.
• accelerated processing including for those from safe countries, those with no or false documents, and those who have crossed borders illegally.
• those who are processed under the border procedure will not be authorised to enter Ireland and will be accommodated at designated locations. Their applications, appeals and removal decisions must be processed within three months.
• new dedicated accommodation for those who are being processed in the border procedure or who are due to be returned to another country.
• a new solidarity mechanism requiring countries to either make a financial contribution to or agree to relocate some asylum seekers from countries facing particular pressures.
• expansion of the categories of migrants who will be fingerprinted and checked against the Eurodac database.
Minister McEntee also stated:
"I will continue to introduce changes to ensure the integrity and efficiency of Ireland’s international protection system.
“I am strengthening legislation and increasing the resources of the International Protection Office to improve processing times. The introduction of enhanced screening and security measures, as well as accelerated processing, will reduce secondary movements and lead to a reduction in overall applications. Early this week I announced the expansion of accelerated processing to applicants from Jordan.
“The faster we can make decisions, the sooner people who need our protection are given the opportunity to re-build their lives here, and the easier it is to return a person who is found not to have a right to be here.”
Accelerated processing was introduced by Minister McEntee in November 2022 and there has been a reduction of up to 70% in applications from the countries which are subject to accelerated processing.
Opting into the Pact provides a significant opportunity for Ireland to redesign the system for granting protection in line with European common standards.
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Notes for editors:
The EU Migration and Asylum Pact is designed to create a more unified approach to managing migration flows across the EU while ensuring respect for human rights. The Pact is a package of new and existing legislative measures which will reform the Common European Asylum System.
The Pact includes measures to streamline asylum procedures, strengthen external border controls, and address the root causes of migration. These measures will apply in ordinary times as well as in times of migratory pressure and crisis situations.
Ireland will be participating in following seven legislative measures under the Pact:
• The Asylum Procedure Regulation
• Asylum and Migration Management Regulation
• The Eurodac Regulation
• The Crisis and Force Majeure Regulation
• The Reception Conditions Directive
• The Qualification Regulation
• The Union Resettlement and Humanitarian Admission Framework Regulation
Membership of the Pact will build on other recent initiatives to improve the international protection system in Ireland.
Additional information on actions taken by the Department of Justice in the area of immigration:
1. Suspended visa free travel to Ireland for refugees who are holders of a Convention Travel Document issued by another State, added countries to the visa required list, and will be taking more measures to clamp down on visa free travel form countries with significant number of International Protection applicants.
2. Accelerated processes have now been introduced for:
a) 15 safe countries of origin - Albania, Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Egypt, Georgia, India, Kosovo, Malawi, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Morocco, Serbia and South Africa;
b) applicants who have received protection elsewhere in Europe;
c) citizens of the countries which provide the greatest number of applicants in the previous quarter (at the moment, Nigeria and Jordan).
3. Provided specific funding to An Garda Síochána for a programme to assign Garda Airline Liaison Officers to European Transport Hubs to prevent irregular migration.
4. Assigned additional resources in Dublin Airport to carry out ‘doorstop’ operation on flights that pose risks of irregular migration. Over 3, 700 ‘doorstop’ operations were carried out in the first half of 2024.
5. An Garda Síochána have arrested 115 people in the first half of 2024 for arriving without appropriate documentation and a significant number have been convicted.
6. Last year, saw a reduction of one third in the number of persons arriving at Dublin Airport without the correct documentation. The numbers arriving without the correct documentation for 2024 are on-course to approximately be 50% of that in 2022.
7. The Border Management Unit continues to provide training and 24-hour advice to Airlines on how to identify and deal with immigration abuse.
8. There has been a significant investment in speeding up processing of International Protection applications; this includes doubling the staff assigned to the International Protection Office and the opening of a new processing location at Citywest in April of this year.
9. This investment has led to the number of decisions issuing increasing threefold and will increase further this year.
10. The number of deportation orders signed up to 25 July 2024 (1174) has increased by 90% for the same period in 2023 (617 up to 28 July 2023).
11. Enforced deportations are up 123% and voluntary returns are up 153% on the same period last year; both more than doubled.
12. Charter flights will be required to support the removal process, commencing later this year; a procurement process for this is well advanced.
13. The process to release up to 100 more Gardaí to support immigration enforcement activities is advancing and will be substantially completed within the next 12 months. Additional administrative immigration work at Dublin Airport has been transferred to the Border Management Unit and 80% of immigration registration duties nationwide have transferred to the Department of Justice from An Garda Síochána.
14. Engagement between the Department of Justice, the UK Home Office, An Garda Síochána and the Police Service of Northern Ireland around protecting the Common Travel Area (CTA) from abuses is ongoing.
15. Border Management Unit (BMU), Garda National immigration Bureau (GNIB) and colleagues in the UK Border Force and Immigration Enforcement, engage via joint operations and intelligence-sharing to respond to current trends of CTA travel and suspected areas of abuse.
16. Immigration investigations and enforcement action are being undertaken on a daily basis by the GNIB who work closely with their counterparts in UK Border Force and Immigration Enforcement in Joint operations to detect and tackle abuses of the CTA. Operation Sonnet is a Garda operation targeting abuse of the CTA and has been ongoing for some time. It targets people attempting to abuse the CTA by illegally crossing the Irish border from Northern Ireland.
17. Last week, the Courts, Civil Law, Criminal Law, and Superannuation Act was signed into law. This Act brings forward provisions in response to a High Court judgment to allow for the designation of safe third countries in relation to inadmissible applications. and allows for increased penalties for carriers who are found to not have conducted appropriate checks from €3,000 to €5,000.
18. Ireland is responding to changing patterns of migration in recent years, which only reinforces the need for the EU Asylum and Migration Pact to allow us work with our European partners and to benefit from funding to help us deal with this issue. Without it, Ireland would be isolated and numbers of people coming here would certainly increase.