Expenditure Review Report of Asylum and Immigration Process

In 2000 the Government approved the allocation of 370 additional staff to the asylum and immigration areas of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform to meet a massive increase in demand for services in these areas. This approval was provided on the basis that a consultancy review should be carried out in due course of staff numbers in these areas to include a review of processing systems, procedures and processes. It was specified that any recommendations made would be on the basis that there could be no change in overall approved staff numbers. This Expenditure Review of Asylum and Immigration was included in a series of expenditure reviews - to be carried out by the Department - submitted to the Department of Finance in 2003.

Following agreement on the review's terms of reference, and an open tendering process, the contract for the carrying out of the review was awarded to the PA Consulting Group. One of the review's key objectives was to undertake a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the operation of the asylum, immigration and citizenship areas of the Department and associated offices (Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, Refugee Appeals Tribunal, Refugee integration Agency and the Refugee Legal Service), which included a review and assessment of the utilization of resources including staff resources and the operation of current processes and procedures. The ORAC, RAT and the work areas of the Department dealing with immigration, asylum, visas and citizenship now come under the aegis of the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS) which was established in March 2005 to, inter alia, provide a "one stop shop" for entry to the State.

A summary of the background and approach taken to the review is included in the Department's introduction to the Report.

The review commenced in late 2004 and was completed in early 2006. This was a period of major change for the asylum and immigration system under INIS with asylum applications falling and demand for other immigration services increasing considerably. As pointed out in the review, this meant that the review process was dynamic, adapting to and influencing key changes that arose during the review period.

The main features of the review process included:-

• A detailed review of the asylum and immigration systems across all areas of the Department/INIS and agencies (ORAC, RAT and RLS) involved. This included interviews with officials and staff workshops as well as in-depth data collection.
• Consultations with stakeholders across Government Departments, social partners and NGO's.
• A review of other countries on specific aspects of asylum and immigration.

The review took longer than envisaged because of the number of agencies involved and complex nature of the process. As already indicated, the review was also carried out during a period of significant change, with asylum applications in the State falling and very significant increases in demands for other immigration services. The review also underwent an extensive external quality assessment process which was completed in July 2006.

A unique feature of the Review was that it was a dynamic constantly evolving process, which meant that as recommendations were agreed, the implementation cycle for those recommendations also began.

The Report's main recommendations (see Section 5.3 of the Report) are summarized in the first link below together with a status report on implementation. This progress report shows that the Report's recommendations have already been implemented or are in the course of implementation.

The full text of the report can be viewed by clicking on the second link below.

Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service
November 2006

Downloads

PA Report - Recommendations and Actions (Size 28KB)

VFM Report on Asylum and Immigration (Size 384KB)

These documents are in Adobe PDF format.  A free Adobe reader can be downloaded here.