Ms Oonagh Buckley:

There is a further group - just short of 50 - working in the appeals tribunal, plus they use a panel of about 30 lawyers to help them with their report. That is the extent of the resources that go into the decision-making process.

With regard to the countries Ireland's migrants come from, it is an interesting question. They come from all over the world. We very occasionally get applications for international protection from places like the United States and Canada. As countries develop crises, there are spikes in numbers. We saw a spike in numbers from Afghanistan this year. We consistently have a number of people applying from Syria. There are countries like Venezuela, for example, where there have been difficulties.

All countries develop patterns of where their applications come from. Ireland more regularly has applications from English-speaking sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa, while a country like Spain might get a lot of people from Venezuela. It is to do with language, family connections and things like that. We had a period in 2018 and 2019 in which we received substantial numbers of applications from Albania and Georgia, but those have trailed off in recent times. It varies widely. Any day, you could end up with somebody applying from any one of 190 countries, pretty much. Though the numbers are relatively small in comparison with some of our fellow EU member states, they are incredibly varied, and the circumstances people come from are similarly varied.