Ms Oonagh McPhillips:

I thank the committee for the invitation to meet regarding the two Votes. I am also grateful to the comptroller and his office for their work. I will share my time with the director general, Ms McCaffrey.

As the committee is aware, the justice Vote is one of six Votes in the sector and funds a wide range of public services in the Department itself and in a number of statutory agencies and bodies, with over 3,500 people working to serve the Government and the public. The organisation is growing in numbers, increasing from 3,149 staff in 2022 to 3,533 in 2023, and in diversity as well. The Department comprised 58% women in 2023, with an average gender pay gap of 5.3%, and on other diversity markers I am pleased to note increasing numbers of colleagues with disabilities, of more varied ethnicity and from the LGBT community. We have a purpose that connects people across a very wide variety of roles, all of them supporting our mission of working for a safe, fair and inclusive Ireland.

The Department's net expenditure for 2022, the year under examination, was €398 million, and as the Comptroller and Auditor General has mentioned, this included capital expenditure of €33.1 million on the new, world-class laboratory for Forensic Science Ireland which was completed last year. Current expenditure is under two distinct programmes of work across 46 subheads in the Vote. Programme A is criminal justice and programme B is civil justice, which includes immigration. In the year leading to April 2022, the CSO recorded that almost 90,000 people moved to Ireland. Some 22,000 were returning Irish citizens, 25,000 were arrivals from UK and EU countries, 10,000 were from India and 5,000 were from Brazil. These figures illustrate that the overwhelming majority of the people who move to Ireland do so to work or study and make vital contributions to our economy and society. As the committee will be aware, sectors like healthcare, home care, home construction, technology, retail, hospitality and transport are hugely dependent on the very positive contributions that migrants make.

Of course, 2022 also saw the invasion of Ukraine, which posed an unprecedented humanitarian challenge. Following the triggering of the temporary protection directive in early March that year, the Department moved quickly to establish our Ukraine response team. Within a few days, with support from the DAA and working closely with colleagues in the Department of integration and the Department of Social Protection, the team had put in place a dedicated operation. They worked collaboratively and compassionately to welcome and register people fleeing the war so they could access necessary supports as quickly as possible. Our data and IT teams innovated and worked across government to create a joined-up paperless operation and the team moved to more suitable office accommodation in City West and a more sustainable work pattern in May 2022.

Some 68,774 beneficiaries of temporary protection were registered in 2022, and 32,573 were registered in 2023, meaning that to date, in the region of 104,000 people have been granted temporary protection under the directive. Parallel to this, there was a return to international travel following the lifting of Covid restrictions. Our border management unit at Dublin Airport processed 13.9 million arrivals in 2022. That increased to 16.6 million in 2023 and the number of applicants for international protection increased significantly with 13,647 applications in 2022, which reduced slightly to 13,276 in 2023. Managing this increase has involved adaptability and skill by colleagues at all levels. We do not claim to be perfect but significant progress is being made across the international protection system to meet the scale of demand. This has involved unparalleled investment in staff and panel members, re-engineered processes, and technology. The outcome of this can be seen in the number of monthly determinations made by the IPO, up from 281 in November 2022 to just over 1,000 in November 2023. The Minister introduced an accelerated process for applicants from safe countries in November 2022 and these applicants now typically receive first-instance decisions in less than ten weeks. The number of applications from safe countries has fallen by 38% in the first year of this accelerated process. The IPO made 2,482 first-instance determinations in 2021, 4,323 in 2022 and 9,000 in 2023. Therefore, we are confident of delivering over 14,000 decisions this year, which is another increase of 5,000.

There is also significant investment in the independent International Protection Appeals Tribunal. The timescales for appeals have been reduced from 13.5 months to five and a half months in 2023. Every element of the protection system is being reviewed and re-engineered to deliver fair, fast outcomes for applicants. We are also implementing a major modernisation programme across the entire immigration function. The programme will replace legacy IT systems to introduce an integrated single view of all applicants and restructure immigration operations around efficient common processes to serve the public better.

We have previously discussed here the priority of tackling domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, DSGBV, a key objective in the Department's strategy and the zero tolerance strategy published in June 2022. The Department has worked closely with partners over the past year or so to draft the necessary legislation and to co-design and establish Cuan, the new statutory agency responsible for leading the whole-of-government implementation of the strategy, including the delivery of support services and refuge accommodation, and the equally important task of education, awareness and prevention. Collaboration and partnership between communities and State agencies also underpins the Policing, Security and Community Safety Act, which was signed into law last week. This new legal framework gives effect to the recommendations of the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland and puts in statute the shared ownership of community safety and reforming all aspects of policing, including the functions of An Garda Síochána, and the landscape of oversight, governance and accountability arrangements. The community safety approach has been piloted through three local community partnerships in Longford, Waterford and Dublin's north inner city. These and other areas have also benefited from the community safety innovation fund, which was established in 2022. A total of €1.623 million was allocated to 22 organisations in 2022. This increased to €2.84 million between 30 organisations in 2023, and a total of €3.75 million is available in 2024.

In this vein, I would also mention the youth justice strategy. Expenditure under that subhead was €22.8 million in 2022, while funding of €30 million is provided this year to support youth diversion projects nationwide. These youth diversions and other measures provide both value for money and effective deterrents in preventing the destruction and trauma caused by crime.

The new policing Act will also strengthen independent oversight of An Garda Síochána, through the new Policing and Community Safety Authority which will combine the existing oversight functions of the Policing Authority with the inspection functions carried out by the Garda Inspectorate. A new Garda board is designed to strengthen corporate governance. As the committee is aware, a new complaints body, Fiosrú, will be established to replace the existing GSOC. The Act sets out comprehensive reform of the processes for handling complaints and investigations into allegations of wrongdoing by Garda employees.

The Department works productively with all agencies in the sector and these relationships are governed by formal oversight and performance agreements designed to ensure accountability and clarity while upholding the independence appropriate to various bodies. We work with the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform to secure funding and resource needs for each body through the annual Estimates process. The Department has engaged proactively with GSOC since its establishment. GSOC's funding has grown from €9.6 million in 2016 to €19.6 million this year, while its staffing has also more than doubled in the same period. We recognise and support its challenging and vital role and the increased funding demonstrates the Government's strong commitment to building the organisation. My team has worked closely with colleagues in GSOC in preparation for the establishment of Fiosrú. I look forward to engaging with the new CEO and ombudsman who are currently being recruited by the Public Appointments Service for the new structure. We can go into further detail as members wish. I will hand over to Ms McCaffrey.