Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I welcome the Minister for Justice and Equality and congratulate him on his appointment, as it is the first opportunity I have had of doing so in the House. I also welcome the fact that his first Bill was the Criminal Justice (Community Service) (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill. I trust and expect that he will be a reforming Minister in the Department of Justice and Equality; God knows there is plenty of reform required in that Department.

The matter to which I refer tonight is a legacy of the system under previous Ministers, which has become somewhat out of control. I deal with many cases that are a decade or 12 years old, but this is the oldest case - that of a person who has been within the asylum system for 14 years. It highlights the inadequacy of the immigration system as it operates at present. It seems the system is something of a labyrinth; once entered, it is almost impossible to exit. One goes around in circles indefinitely, never knowing whether one will come out at the end at all.

In this case, a man arrived in this country and sought refugee status in April 1997, and 14 years later, now virtually middle-aged, he is still enveloped in the system and has not been able to escape. There is a litany of applications, refusals and appeals. The man became the parent of an Irish-born child prior to 2003. There were deportation orders and appeals, a ministerial affirmation of a deportation order, and now the non-implementation of that order. For the last three years the applicant has been attending the Garda National Immigration Bureau monthly, waiting for travel arrangements to be made for his deportation, none of which has ever transpired. In the meantime, his Irish child has grown and is now nine years old and attending an Irish school. The man himself has been unable to obtain gainful employment for the past 14 years, even though he is desperately anxious to work and has skills. He is almost worn out by the stress and the threat of deportation every day for the past three years, along with the requirement to attend the GNIB regularly.

It is in this context that I mention the document Government for National Recovery 2011-2016, which states: "We will introduce comprehensive reforms of the immigration, residency and asylum systems, which will include a statutory appeals system and set out rights and obligations in a transparent way." It is now time for the new Government to review all the asylum and immigration applications that are in the pipeline at various stages of processing by the Department of Justice and Equality, particularly those that have been there for a considerable period. As a new Government, we owe it to people who have spent excessive periods awaiting decisions by the immigration system to deal with their outstanding applications as quickly as possible. It is contrary to natural justice to keep any human being in limbo for 14 years.

The Minister should now examine this case, along with the other cases, and demonstrate sympathy for those people whose applications for residency or refugee status in this country have not been processed in an equitable and timely manner. We should carefully consider the situation that has arisen. We need to deal with the backlog, rather than investigating the reasons for it, establish mechanisms to ensure it does not continue in this manner, and ensure that the cases that are waiting to be dealt with, in one form or another, are dealt with urgently.

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