Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 8 July 2026
164. Deputy Carol Nolan asked the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration if his Department or the International Protection Office collects data on the number of instances where a person is found to have made a false and/or misleading statement on their application for international protection; if so, the number of such instances from 2020 t to 2025 and to date in 2026; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52245/26]
Amharc ar fhreagraI can assure the Deputy that I am fully committed to ensuring that Ireland's International Protection system is robust and rules based.
The International Protection process decides if an applicant has a well-founded fear of persecution, or is at risk of serious harm in their country of origin. An assessment of the applicant's identity and the credibility of their application forms a key part of this consideration.
A key focus in the training, supervision and quality assurance of our process is in assessing the credibility of an individual application, including where it seeks to rely on circumstances in a country of origin which might give rise in general terms to a well founded fear of persecution.
Where a person does not have a well-founded fear, or does not have some other strong ground for remaining in the State, they are made the subject of a deportation order, unless they agree to leave voluntarily. The information requested by the Deputy on the reasons for refusal of international protection is not recorded in a manner that allows the information to be extracted from the relevant databases.
The International Protection Act 2026 gives effect to the EU Migration and Asylum Pact and came into operation on 12 June 2026, the same day as the Pact measures came into effect.
The Pact provides a fair, sustainable and efficient asylum procedure. This will be achieved through convergence in asylum practices across the EU including standardised processing times for decisions.
One of the new provisions in the EU Pact is the Asylum Border Procedure. This will provide for a twelve-week timeframe, extendable to sixteen weeks in certain circumstances, for the examination of applications for international protection, including the appeal to the new Tribunal for Asylum Returns and Appeals.
The Asylum Border Procedure will apply to applicants from countries of origin with a recognition rate of 20% or less across the EU, applicants who have intentionally misled the authorities by presenting false information or documents or by withholding relevant information or documents, applicants who have, in bad faith, destroyed or disposed of documents in order to prevent the establishment of their identity or nationality, or applicants who are deemed a national security risk.
