Mr. Doncha O'Sullivan:

I thank the Senator. I will try to answer the last question first. I assure the Senator that there is absolutely no threat to the integrity of the decisions made by the International Protection Office. As I said earlier, the people who work there are independent in their decision-making. They receive the latest training from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, and from European Union Agency for Asylum. We are very focused on getting to the right decision and on making fair decisions. We are routinely granting people protection status, including those from safe countries of origin.

As for the process relating to deciding on safe countries of origin, the 2015 Act defines how that is to be met. The Act refers to the Minister being satisfied that there is genuinely no persecution, torture, inhumane or degrading treatment or threat of violence or armed conflict in a particular country. We arrive at the decision by looking at information from the UNHCR, the UN and elsewhere in order to assess the conditions in a country. We come to a view on foot of that information.

It is really important to note that notwithstanding that determination, where individuals present with a well-founded fear of persecution, bearing in mind that all the types of circumstances the Senator described are potentially in the persecution space, and if they meet a sufficiently high bar, they will receive protection stratus. In the case of certain countries, we have assessed that for most people, most of the time, there is not a general concern. That is not to say there are no instances of discrimination in those countries or there is not scrutiny around their human rights records. Some of them are EU accession countries and we see work being done between them and the EU on human rights, the rule of law and so on. The point is whether an individual has a well-founded fear of persecution. We are very focused on making sure that where it emerges from the assessment of a claim that there is such a fear, that person will receive protection.

As I mentioned earlier, we plan to do a review of the list of countries that are deemed to be safe. We aim to get most of them done this year and all of them within the next 12 months, at which point we will go back and look at the latest information we have. We are always looking at the information, as I said, and we are, of course, familiar with the circumstances in countries like Georgia. Such circumstances very often might be part of a claim and if it turns out there is a well-founded fear of persecution on particular grounds, the person concerned would get status. It does not mean that is a fear the generality of people coming from Georgia, say, would have. We have a strong focus on taking such issues into consideration.