Mr. Michael Kirrane:

I will explain what has happened since the introduction of the International Protection Act. There was an initial period in which a transitional arrangement under the Act required a lot of cases to come back under that Act. That created some problems initially. Approximately 3,500 cases had to be dealt with before new cases could start to be dealt with under the Act. That created a difficulty which has not substantially been dealt with. The average processing time moved out as a result and is approximately 19.7 months at present.