Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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347. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the recognition rate, including appeals, for all international protection applicants; and the recognition rate, including appeals, for applicants from designated safe countries of origin, to date in 2025; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52688/25]

Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
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My Department is taking all necessary steps to manage the international protection process efficiently and effectively, while ensuring the integrity of those processes is maintained at all times.

There has been a significant increase in investment into the international protection system which, combined with digitisation and process reengineering, has facilitated a major increase in processing capacity. In 2024 the International Protection Office (IPO) delivered over 14,000 first-instance decisions compared to over 8,500 in 2023. To end September 2025, it has delivered over 15,000 decisions, an increase of 52% over the same period last year. The Government will continue to invest in the end-to-end international protection process to speed up decision making.

Accelerated processing was introduced in November 2022, and it now applies to those from designated safe countries of origin, applicants who have received protection elsewhere in Europe and those from a country with a particularly high number of applications. Since the introduction of accelerated processing, the number of applicants from these groups has dropped significantly.

The table below shows all international protection first instance decisions made in 2025. Broken down by those granted an International Protection Status of either Refugee Status (RD) or Subsidiary Protection (SP) and those not granted an International Protection Status.

*To 01 October 2025.

The table below shows all international protection first instance decisions made in 2025 for applicants from safe countries of origin only. Broken down by those granted an International Protection Status of either Refugee Status (RD) or Subsidiary Protection (SP) and those not granted an International Protection Status.

(1) Not granted IP refers these people who were not granted international protection status in a first instance decision. In these circumstances a small number of people may be granted permission to remain or will have withdrawn their applications, but the majority of applications have been refused in the first instance.

All IPO first instance decisions other than Refugee Status grants can be appealed to the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT).

The table below shows all IPAT decisions issued in 2025.

The table below shows the number of IPAT decisions issued in 2025 for International Protection applicants from safe countries of origin only.

Please note, figures are correct at time of issue, however, all statistics may be subject to data cleansing.