Ms Oonagh Buckley:

I thank the Chair for his good questions. As I mentioned, there has been significant impact on processing because of the pandemic in the past two years. The Catherine Day report was predicated on us processing approximately 3,500 applications a year. We were getting quite close to that level of output towards the end of 2019. I have the figures in front of me and for this year, up to the end of October 2021, we have processed roughly 1,900 applications and granted permission in just over 1,000 applications. In 2020, we processed 2,141 applications, meaning those applicants got a ministerial decision, either a grant or a refusal. As I said, at a point in 2019 we were starting to manage the caseload in a very effective way, but that unfortunately came to a significant halt in 2020 and 2021.

The average case processing times for all cases at the moment is 23 months and for prioritised applications it is 14 months. A prioritised application would be an application from a country where we would be reasonably sure that persons will be granted international protection. An example at present would be persons applying from Afghanistan who, as one could imagine, would be very much in that space.

I mentioned that following the Catherine Day report and the White Paper, we will be seeking to move towards this new system and have it in place by 2024.

With regard to resources, we have been given sanction and the Estimate for next year involves funding for additional resources for the IPO, which is extremely helpful. As always, we could probably have asked for more. However, we certainly got something, which was very useful. We have also been resourced, most critically, for the ICT investment that will be needed to drive this change. The most important initial part of that will be to move to a paperless system. A business case will be made to move to that in the International Protection Appeals Tribunal first and then move backwards through the IPO.

Mr. Delaney may have something to add if I have not covered all the matters.