Commenting on the latest figures from the Department of Justice that show an increase of asylum applications being refused, a fall in asylum applications and an increase in deportations, Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín stated:
“Aontú has always said that we need to provide shelter to those fleeing war and violence. But we have also said that we must have a strict immigration policy to ensure that the Irish asylum process is not being taken advantage of.
For years Aontú has being pushing the government to do the right thing. For years the government has said that due to international obligations they could not change the system. That’s has proven to be false.
In 2022 28% of asylum applications failed the first application. This year so far, more than 80% are failing the application system. Either the government have become much stricter in the application process or there is a significant change in the type of people applying for asylum. I believe that its bit of both.
FF, FG and the Greens were so lax in the application process 3 and 4 years ago, that the vast majority of people who applied simply received asylum. This sent message loud and clear internationally that Ireland was a soft touch and many people who were not fleeing war and violence, who were looking for economic opportunities started to use the asylum system.
Remember thousands of people were entering the country after destroying passports and travel documents. The majority of people were coming from Britain, a safe country, through the north of Ireland to this state. Incredibly the Minister for Justice was unaware of this and it took Aontú to do the research and show the Minister.
Aontú too pointed out that only a tiny amount of deportations were being enforced. The Minister stated that this is all they could do, yet here we see again that if there is a political will, it can be done.
Now because the government has become stricter in terms of its actions the number of asylum applicants has fallen as predicted by Aontú. There is still a problem. Proven deportations are still less than half of those who have received deportation orders. Everyone who receives a deportation order should be deported. The government has still no way of confirming of people exit from the country. The government still does not know if people with expired holiday, working, or student visas have left the country. This is a big weakness.
The biggest problem of all remains. There government has still no agreement with the British government to control the movement of people from Britian through the north and into this state. Until this is done the government are still not fully in control.
Remember there is a massive cost to this. Aontú received a PQ response from the Minister which shows that the cost of accommodating asylum seekers topped €1billion last year, a 54% increase on the previous year. The failure rate of the application system indicates that that up to 80% of this cost, is not for those fleeing war but to accommodate those abusing the system. There is a small cohort of people getting very rich from this broken system in Ireland.
The €1billion is not the full cost. It does not include the application process costs or the social welfare costs. It does not include either the damage to social cohesion that has happened as a result of the incompetency of the government”.
