Ms Oonagh Buckley:

That is fine. Indeed, I might ask one of my colleagues to give a more detailed answer as I might know the generalities but not the detail.

In terms of the waiting times, the goal of the Department is to meet a medium time for first decision, from the International Protection Office, IPO, in nine months, by the end of this year. We are, however, a way off that at the moment and we may miss our goal. Part of the challenge has been as follows. We have increased staffing in the IPO of civil servants by 20% and doubled the number of legal advisers who conduct initial interviews and so forth in the last two years, it is challenging for the Civil Service to recruit people into what, as members will know, is an extremely tight labour market.

We struggle to recruit the necessary staff in a timely fashion. This problem is not unique to the immigration service or the Department of Justice and Equality. It is an issue in Dublin with regard to recruiting civil servants. However, we have increased staffing there by 20% in two years. We have doubled the number of legal advisers who do the initial interviews. We have reduced the overall hearing times.

Another issue that has arisen is that when the 2015 Act came into force thousands of existing applications were in the system. They were reset to zero and started again through the process. There was a challenge in dealing with the bulge of overhanging applications that existed at the time. They had to be dealt with in a timely fashion and in order because of legal restrictions and requirements, and the requirements of the UNHCR. Unlike other organisations that I managed in the past, where we were able to work on new applications and existing applications in two streams, this had to be done in consecutive order, which led to a large delay that was, in effect, built in from the get-go. The team in the IPO is getting on top of this and we are moving towards a situation where applications coming in under the new Act in the first instance are being dealt with in a more timely fashion.

Senator Black also mentioned delays between the decision being given by the IPO or the international protection appeals tribunal, IPAT, and the letter issuing from the Minister. Certainly there has been issue with an extended delay due to checks being conducted. These final checks involved a final run through to establish, for example, whether there was any issue of a criminal record. As my colleague, Mr. Kirrane, will be able to tell the committee, we have introduced a new policy of issuing these letters in a much more timely fashion and we should start to see it come through very shortly.