A Supreme Court justice has criticised the delays and complexity of Ireland’s former asylum and subsidiary protection process in a separate judgment on an appeal concerning subsidiary protection.
Mr Justice John MacMenamin, in a judgment dated 28 July 2016, said he agreed with the judgment and order proposed by Mr Justice Clarke. The source does not set out the proposed order or the Supreme Court’s disposition of the appeal, so the precise outcome cannot be stated from this judgment alone.
The appeal arose under a system that required separate, sequential applications for asylum and subsidiary protection. MacMenamin J said the process could take years, prompting extensive judicial review litigation and significant legal costs to the State. He said the human cost was harder to quantify, describing applicants as living for long periods without certainty about their future, sometimes in inadequate accommodation.
He questioned whether an inefficient system deterred applicants whose claims lacked merit, saying he suspected the opposite. He acknowledged that some people were not genuine asylum seekers and that the system had been abused, while noting that many applicants had young families whose children had become established in Ireland.
The judgment identified two children in the appeal only as the third and fourth respondents. It said the fourth respondent had lived in Ireland for seven years and nowhere else, while the third respondent arrived at age one and had not lived elsewhere since. Their identities remain redacted.
MacMenamin J also referred to the appellants having gone “off the radar” of the asylum process after a 2012 High Court decision. He said they continued living in Ireland and were registered with the Department of Social Protection as having been employed in Ireland for much of the intervening period. He noted that the State was not said to have taken action to trace them.
The judgment referred to the International Protection Act 2015, which it said was being implemented in phases and was expected to be fully operational by the end of 2016. MacMenamin J expressed hope that it would produce a coherent, timely and humane system.