Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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71. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the number of applicants who were awarded with the status of permission to remain in each of the years 2012 to date in 2016; the number whose vintage was recent at 2013 or later and those prior to that date; the total number of applicants currently with the status of leave to remain; the total number of applicants currently awaiting a decision; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [31403/16]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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It is assumed that the Deputy is enquiring about applicants who have come through the international protection system (asylum and subsidiary protection) and whose applications have been rejected at these stages of the process.

I am informed by the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS) of my Department that a breakdown of the number of rejected protection applicants who were subsequently granted permission to remain (following an examination under section 3 of the Immigration Act 1999 as to whether or not a deportation order should be made) from 1st January 2012 to 31st August 2016 are as follows:

There are approximately 1,500 cases on hand of failed protection applicants currently awaiting a decision under section 3 of the Immigration Act 1999 on whether or not a deportation order should be made against them. A major effort has been made to process the volume of cases on hand over the past 18 months which has reduced the volumes on hand considerably. It should be borne in mind that new cases are constantly entering the system so there will always be a volume of cases on hand. Also, cases can be held up for a variety of reasons such as judicial reviews etc.

It is not possible to ascertain figures in relation to the number of applicants currently with the status of 'leave to remain' as there is a very wide range of persons granted permission to remain for various reasons and the statistics are not compiled in such a way that the number of those granted permission following an examination of whether or not to make a deportation order under section 3 of the Immigration Act 1999, following an unsuccessful international protection application, can be extracted from the overall figure. Also, it is not possible to carry out the age analysis of applications requested by the Deputy.

As the Deputy is aware, the current system for processing international protection applications involves a number of sequential steps, namely: the first instance asylum decision made by the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner (ORAC), a potential appeal to the Refugee Appeals Tribunal (RAT) of a negative asylum decision, an application to ORAC for subsidiary protection and a potential further appeal to the RAT of a negative subsidiary protection decision, before a proposal to deport is issued to an unsuccessful protection applicant under section 3 of the Immigration Act 1999. The Deputy will also be aware that the International Protection Act 2015 provides for the introduction of a single application procedure for international protection, which is specifically aimed at addressing the length of time persons spend in the protection process. The new procedure will streamline and speed up the processing of protection applications and will significantly reduce the length of time that persons spend awaiting a decision on their protection application.