Mr. Michael Kirrane:

We have 3,600 live cases at the moment, two thirds of which are already scheduled for interview and one third of which have yet to be scheduled for interview. To put that into perspective, we have received precisely that number of new applications since 1 January. We are catching up rapidly. We have expanded the staff in this area to deal with the caseload. There are approximately 144 staff in the International Protection Office, along with 70 legal panel members who hear cases. We seek to give first-instance decisions as quickly as possible.