Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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209. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality to confirm, in tabular form, the number of staff or contractors and their grades in her Department assigned to International Protection Office, and the immigration service delivery divisions on 1 January 2023, 1 January 2024 and 1 April 2024; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [19999/24]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I can confirm that my Department takes all necessary steps to manage the international protection process efficiently and effectively, while ensuring the integrity of those processes is maintained at all times.

Making sure that applications are processed quickly means those who need our protection are given the opportunity to re-build their life in Ireland in a timely manner. It also means that those who do not qualify, return to their country of origin.

My Department have taken a significant number of measures to increase the capacity of the international protection system.

In November 2022, I introduced an accelerated procedure for international protection applicants from designated safe countries of origin. These applicants now typically receive a first instance decision in less than three months, a significant reduction from a norm of 22 to 26 months in recent years. For the year up to 31 January 2024 the number of applications from safe countries has reduced by more than 50% compared to previous 12 month period.

In July 2023, I published a report on the international protection modernisation programme for 2023 and 2024. This programme involved unparalleled investment in staff, panel members, reengineered processes, and technology. We have implemented measures to improve efficiencies and throughput as well as enhancing the application, interview and decision-making process for applicants.

One of the priority areas of focus has been to recruit both civil servants and panel members, to increase case processing. The International Protection Office now has over 400 staff, an increase of 95% over 2022. The IPO made 2,482 first instance determinations in 2021, 4323 in 2022, 9,000 in 2023 and are confident of delivering over 14,000 decisions this year.

These reforms and increased staff numbers are having a significant impact with the median processing time for all first-instance decisions reducing from 18 months in 2022 down to 13 months in 2023. The median processing time for appeals was 5.5 months in 2023 down from 13.5 months at the start of 2022.

Since I introduced accelerated processing in November 2022, applications from eight designated safe countries have dropped by 50%. I added two additional countries to the safe country list earlier this year and eight more are under review.

Last week, I extended fast processing to whatever country has the highest number of applicants. This will be reviewed on a quarterly basis.

Reforms to the international protection process will continue in 2024. Approximately €34m additional funding was allocated in Budget 2024 to the International Protection Office (IPO) and the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) to continue to scale up processing. These measures, and all other aspects of the international protection modernisation programme will continue to be kept under review and improved on a continuous ongoing basis.

The International Protection Office (IPO) is the largest function that sits within the Immigration Service Delivery (ISD).

From the end of 2022 to 2024 Q1, the IPO increased its headcount by 205 (97%) while the overall headcount for the ISD increased its headcount by 243 (28%). For clarity, excluding the IPO, the ISD headcount increased by 38 over the period.

The table below details the staff in the IPO at times requested by the Deputy:

IPO Headcount

The table below details the staff in Immigration Service Delivery, including those in the IPO, at the times requested by the Deputy:

ISD Headcount

In addition to staff, case processing panel members are contracted by the Department to make recommendations on International Protection cases to the International Protection Office.

In January 2023 there were 93 panel members. This number rose to 129 panel members in January 2024 with a further 72 individuals in training. In April 2024 there were 176 panel members with a further 28 individuals in training.