Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 5 November 2015
Public Accounts Committee
Annual Report and Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General 2014
Vote 21: Prisons
Vote 24: Department of Justice and Equality
Chapter 9: Development of Prison Accommodation in Dublin
10:00 am
Mr. Noel Waters:
There is a very large process with a large number of people involved in this. It is an independent process run by the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, who is an independent officer of the Minister and of the Department while part of the Department. That office does what is known as country of origin research in a very large way. The office is also very much a part of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees training programme. That has all been very well established and there is a very large amount of information available to people in the Department in terms of documentation and access to the information about the countries. That is very well established. We started off very poorly in that respect ten years ago but by now we have extensive documentation around that process.