Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party)
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370. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality if she will provide, in tabular form, the number of persons granted leave to remain on humanitarian grounds, under section 3 of the Immigration Act 1999, since its enactment; the number of such applications still pending; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [14593/15]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy will be aware that section 3 of the Immigration Act, 1999 (as amended) does not provide for the granting of permission to remain. However, following a comprehensive and detailed examination of representations submitted for consideration under Section 3 of the Immigration Act, 1999 (as amended) a decision is made as to whether or not to make a Deportation Order in each case. If a decision is made not to make a Deportation Order, a grant of permission to remain will subsequently ensue. The numbers of grants is provided in the following table.

It should be noted that considerations under Section 3 of the Act arise from a wide range of situations including, for example, from persons who have been unsuccessful in the protection process and also from persons who have not been granted a permission to be in the State either having been here illegally or who had a permission that had not been renewed. The volume of cases on hand is difficult to estimate and any figures involved can be somewhat misleading. For example in the case of families, the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS) of my Department will usually process the entire family together. However, Section 3 considerations for some family members can be held up due to individual family members being a different stages of the process, often because one family member has decided to take a judicial review of an earlier decision or because the applicants have made asylum applications for various family members sequentially.

Persons granted leave to remain after consideration of their cases under section 3 of the Immigration Act 1999

Year	No
1999	23
2000	11
2001	54
2002	105
2003	63
2004	216
2005	172
2006	226
2007	731
2008	1,052
2009	512
2010	232
2011	1,074
2012	489
2013	763
2014	768