Mr. David Costello:

The Deputy is correct that in the past recognition rates have been very low but there has been considerable investment made in terms of quality and training. The UNHCR has a section in my office. The staff are there three or four days a week. We also have all sorts of standard templates for making decisions and guidance notes, which take on board all UNHCR best practice. The result of this has been a significant increase in recognition rates. The recognition rates are a factor of the nature of cases as well in that an applicant must satisfy the criteria and the legislation to be either a refugee or to be entitled to subsidiarity protection. The recognition rates for 2017, excluding relocation, was 21% and, excluding relocation, was 50%. Thus far in 2018, the recognition rate, excluding relocation, is 27% . Including relocation - these are the people coming from Greece - it is 43%. We are seeing a lot of applicants from Syria. There is a 100% recognition rate for Syria. Everyone who has come in under the relocation programme has been granted international protection. Approximately 1,000 plus grants have been given out in the last couple of years because the applicants satisfy the criteria. Similarly, applicants from other countries such as Eritrea, which have large refugee generating backgrounds, are granted refugee status as well.

The UNHCR sits on a quality committee with us, which meets every six weeks and reviews a proportion of the decisions made in the previous six weeks with a view to identifying problems and what lessons need to be learned. It also reviews the position regard decisions of ours overturned by the International Protection Appeals Tribunal from the point of view of whether we got it wrong and what we can do about feeding that back into the process; and what we can learn from court judgments. In respect of my office, there are not many court judgments because as our quality has improved we do not have a lot of judicial reviews. All of this work is fed to our case workers through training development. I think I can give a guarantee that we have improved the system substantially. The UNHCR works closely with us. All of the staff training is done by UNHCR international experts. We are doing our best to continue along the road to having a good system. European Union countries are coming to us seeking examples of our guidance and templates as international best practice, which did not happen before. Whereas years ago we used to go elsewhere to seek examples of how we could improve our system, countries are now coming to us. There are still many challenges to overcome but we are doing our best to continue to improve the quality of the system.