Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent)
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35. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality if he will outline in tablular format the number of persons granted subsidiary protection in each of the past five years; the number of those refused in each of the past five years; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9706/14]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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The information requested by the Deputy is set out in a table.

As the Deputy will be aware I made new Regulations last year governing the investigation and determination of applications for subsidiary protection in the State. The European Union (Subsidiary Protection) Regulations 2013, which came into effect on 14 November 2013, were made to address certain matters which arose from the judgment of the High Court in January 2013 in the MM case. The number of cases finalised in 2013 reflects the impact of the High Court judgement on the processing of Subsidiary Protection applications.

Under the new Regulations, responsibility for the processing of applications for subsidiary protection was transferred from my Department to the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner with appeals to be dealt with by the Refugee Appeals Tribunal. Both of these bodies are independent in the exercise of their statutory functions and they have substantial experience in the area of asylum investigations and appeals, respectively. Once the new arrangements have bedded down, my aim is for applications currently on hand to be processed to finality by the statutory bodies concerned in the shortest possible timeframe consistent with quality and fair assessment of all cases and of course, subject to the cooperation of applicants and no further legal impediments arising. In those circumstances I would anticipate very significant inroads to be made on the caseload by the end of 2014.