Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent)
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502. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the number of applicants residing here who are still waiting to receive a first instance decision from the International Protection Office; the number of such applicants that have been waiting between nought to six months, six to 12 months, 12 months to two years and two to five years; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [35449/22]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The overall objective of my Department is to have recommendations made on international protection applications as soon as possible. This ensures that those who are found to be in need of protection from the State can receive it quickly and begin rebuilding their lives here with a sense of safety and security.

In total, there were 9,048 international protection applications on hand at the International Protection Office (IPO) of my Department at the end of June 2022.

The table below sets out the figures requested by the Deputy.

The Deputy may be aware that in recent months, the number of people claiming international protection has increased significantly, with 6,498 applications made so far this year to the end of June 2022. This is a 191% increase on the same period in 2019, the last year in which application numbers were not impacted by COVID-19.

I can assure the Deputy that my Department continues to work to improve the international protection process and to reduce processing times, in line with the recommendations made by the Expert Advisory Group, led by Dr. Catherine Day, and the commitments in the Government's White Paper, published by my colleague, Minister Roderic O’Gorman. 

However, the substantially higher number of applications currently being received, as outlined, will present a significant challenge in achieving this.

The restrictions on international travel for much of the last two years will naturally have created a higher demand for protection now that travel opportunities have resumed. Similar increases in application numbers are being experienced across our fellow EU Member States. The war in Ukraine is also having an impact. Some Member States are currently hosting hundreds of thousands or even millions of people displaced from Ukraine, leaving them with reduced capacity to support asylum seekers from other countries. 

My Department is taking all possible steps to ensure we can process applications as quickly as possible. An end-to-end review of relevant international protection processes by a multi-disciplinary team from my Department has been completed and published. New measures and procedures will continue to be put in place to improve efficiencies across all aspects of the protection process. 

Since the introduction of new efficiency measures, in the first five months of this year we have been able to increase the number of first instance recommendations and permission to remain decisions being made by the IPO by almost 50%, when compared with the same period pre-Covid in 2019. We will continue to look further at how we increase the processing capacity of the IPO to match the very significant number of international protection applications being received, including through the recruitment of an external panel of barristers, solicitors and legal graduates, which is underway. 

My Department will, by October 2022 at the latest, commence a review of progress made in reducing and improving processing times.