Mr. David Costello:

I am the head of the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner. I am also the deputy chairperson of the European Asylum Support Office, which is the EU agency that is responsible for asylum operational issues in the EU. The functions of my office in Dublin are to investigate applications for refugee status from individuals, applications from refugees for their family members to join them in the State and applications for subsidiary protection. Two forms of international protection are processed by my office - refugee status under the Geneva Convention and subsidiary protection, which is a form of protection under EU law. The Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner employs 100 civil servants. We also employ a panel of legal practitioners on a contract for service basis. Both the civil servants and the legal practitioners undertake the interviews. They will be doing the interviews for the people coming here under the relocation programme. The actual recommendations are made to the Minister for Justice and Equality by civil servants in my office. We also have a wide variety of other functions. When we are processing asylum cases, we must schedule interviews, organise interpreters and carry out country of origin research. A vast array of backroom work has to be carried out as well. All of our case workers, panel members and other staff undergo rigorous training from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The decisions we make in our office are subject to quality assurance by the UNHCR, which is the international agency with a mandate for protecting asylum seekers and refugees.

The plan for the Irish refugee protection programme is that people being relocated to Ireland from Greece and Italy will be processed by my office. From an operational perspective, this will mean members of my office will participate in liaison teams in Italy and Greece to help in the selection of the applicants concerned and to organise their transport to Ireland and other logistical arrangements. It will also involve processing applications. Those applications will be processed at the emergency reception and orientation centres. One of the specs in the establishment of these centres will be that interview facilities will have to be provided to my office. This will involve my staff and panel members going to the office to organise the interviews. Under the EU decision, there is a requirement for those coming in to be fingerprinted and issued with residence cards. We will do that as well. All the applicants concerned are from countries of serious conflict, such as Syria and Eritrea. They are all likely to have well-founded claims for refugee status. Accordingly, I will be able to prioritise them in line with powers I have under the Refugee Act.

Depending on the complexity of the cases involved and a range of factors, such as date of arrival and further numbers because they will be coming in groups over two years, it is anticipated that the processing of applications in the reception and orientation centres will take a number of weeks.

In terms of the readiness of my office, we have already commenced planning for this. We have set up a working group with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, which is advising us on the approach we should take. We intend to utilise our already well-tuned systems for interviewing, organising interpreters and undertaking country of origin research. We have the process and the infrastructure in place. I am also a member of the interdepartmental task force established by the Minister for Justice and Equality. We will be working closely with the UNHCR and a UNHCR expert on international protection and refugee law will be seconded to the office to guide us in the approach we take.