McEntee defends her record on immigration and garda numbers... 'The whole system is being completely ramped up’

Justice Minister Helen McEntee, has made a robust defence of her record on dealing with immigration, asylum seekers, garda numbers and morale, pointing to new legislation and investment which will see significant changes in the months to ahead.

The Meath East Minister has been coming under intense pressure over immigration, garda numbers and garda morale in recent weeks, and clashed with coalition partner and Tanaiste, Micheál Martin over the numbers of asylum seekers coming into the country via Northern Ireland.

Aontú's Peadar Tóibín was highly critical of the Minister last week, for not having figures on several issues such as the number of asylum seekers coming through the north or who have gone missing from State services.

Minister McEntee points out that she is investing in a connected digitised system. “The whole system is being completely ramped up. Digitisation will make sure that all systems are connected which will mean faster processing, better information.

“In 2021 we had 2,650 people coming into the state seeking international protection and then last year we had 13,276, so in the space of two years the numbers more than quadrupled.

“The system, which was developed in 2016, was not equipped to deal with that. What I am doing now is significantly ramping up capacity and digitalising the service so it is more steamlined.

“It was ramped up significantly last year and the numbers working in the International Protection Office has more than doubled and there will be the same increases this year and next year.

“The number of staff in the appeals office has also doubled. They are now doing more then treble the amount of decisions they were doing only a year ago.”

The Minister said something working very well is the new accelerated system for applications from certain countries.

This means that people coming in from certain countries seeking international protection are going into a faster process.

“Their whole application process is dealt with faster, the decision is faster the appeals are faster. I allocated eight initially, I added two early this year and more recently the country that has the highest number of applications than any other, Nigeria.

“This system is working, because already the number of people coming from those countries has dropped by 50 per cent.”

“Last year there were vast numbers of Georgians coming here. Since Georgia went into the accelerated system, the number coming from there has more than halved. They are not even in the top ten.

“The only way to improve the system is to have it move more quickly. The problem is when people are in the system for years, then they have to appeal and that takes years, by then they are settled, they are settled living her, have families and it is difficult to move them. Ramping up the process means people get negative decisions more quickly and it is easier to remove them. Of course if it is a positive decision, it means they can settle down into their communities more quickly. There are people who genuinely need protection”.

She explained that they have introduced airline fines for carriers bringing in people with false documents or who are getting rid of their documents on flights.

“We are providing training with airline staff so they know how to spot if somebody has false documents or is getting rid of documents. We also have people working in some of the airports in Europe to prevent them getting on planes in the first instance.”

Cracks in the coalition became evident last week when Tanaiste, Micheal Martin, argued that a claim by Minister McEntee that 80% of asylum seekers in Ireland had come across the border is “not statistical”.

She stands by that claim. “We know the number that are coming through our airports, we know the number coming through the ports. Not all of the remainder of the people are coming directly to our office have come from Northern Ireland - but from talking to staff a significant number are coming through the north.

“The only way we can stop applicants coming through Northern Ireland is to have a border and we don't want to do that. We fought very hard not to have a border, but the only way to have definitive figures is to have a border.”

Regarding new legislation introduced next week which would allow the government return asylum seekers to the UK, she said she was confident the UK government would continue to work with out government as “ it is in both our interests to protect the Common Travel Area.”

The Minister has come under fire too over garda recruitment and numbers, with Deputy Darren O'Rourke pointing out that Garda numbers in Meath remain the lowest per head of population in the state.

She points out that Meath has received the highest number of new recruits, outside of the Dublin area, since the Garda College opened up again.

She said that as there were no new recruits during Covid but Gardai were still retiring and leaving, it left them with 1000s less than they planned for, “In the last two years recruitment has been ramped up. There are 185 in the latest class in the Garda college and we had 740 recruits go through it last year.

“I have increased the upper age for joining from 35 up to 50, increased the allowance for those in garda college by two thirds and I've increased the retirement age by two years.”

As regards garda morale she said that speaking to gardai she says so many of them love their jobs, but like her, want to see an increase in garda numbers. She said recent negotiations on rosters were coming to a conclusion as they had successfully negotiated a pay agreement.