Seanad debates
Wednesday, 29 January 2003
Immigration Bill, 2002: Committee Stage (Resumed).
Matters have improved dramatically. This might not have been clear to the Senator when she put down this amendment. The Refugee Appeals Tribunal is now dealing with applications made originally in October and November of last year. To permit a two month delay for people who are falling by the wayside would undo all that good work and send the wrong signals to asylum seekers, society at large and to the people who have worked extremely hard – I pay tribute to them for that – to get the system running so smoothly and quickly. To tell them, when they are obliged to deal with a case within, effectively, two or three months as a matter of course, that the applicant can take two months to decide to give an explanation for why they did not attend for an interview would be to introduce an imbalance into the process.
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