More than 23,000 asylum applications now pending in International Protection Office

The number of asylum applications pending in the International Protection Office has risen to more than 23,000, with a sharp increase in the number of asylum seekers also appealing the outcome of their decision.
A report examining the situation within the international protection system in the month of July, which was compiled by the Department of Justice, also shows that there were 608 asylum application refusals last month.
New statistics show that the number of applications currently pending in the IPO stands at 23,360, which is up from 16,566 last September. The number of pending applications for the International Protection Appeals Tribunal has also been trending upwards over the last year. In July 2024, there were 6,257 applications pending, in comparison to a figure of just under 2,000 for the same time last year.
The main countries of origin for arrivals are still Nigeria, Jordan, Pakistan, Somalia and Palestine.
The report also gives information around processing times for asylum applications.
At present the Government is measuring processing times as a median, which represents the middle number in the range of times currently at hand for processing. The Department of Justice says the reason why the average is not used is that there are a handful of cases where processing times are long, and this would disproportionately affect the average figure and not give a “proper representation of processing times”.
The median time to the first interview for all applications had been slowly decreasing in 2024 but rose in July to 68 weeks for standard cases, up from 55.5 weeks in June and 63 weeks in May.
The median processing time for an actual determination in standard cases was 79 weeks, the same figure as in June and down from 83 weeks in May.
The International Protection Office is also prioritising cases from the top two countries of origin with the highest number of applicants in the previous three months. Arrivals from these countries go through an accelerated processing system. Figures from the Department of Justice reveal that for accelerated procedure only cases the waiting time to the first interview was two weeks in July. The median processing time for a determination was 11 weeks in July, up from seven in June but the same as May.
Of those applications where a decision was made, some 395 applicants were granted refugee status. There were 608 refusals and 211 reviews of permission to remain decisions.
Overall for July 54 per cent of decisions were refusals, 5 per cent were permission to remain, and 41 per cent were international protection grants.
The number of deportation orders signed last month stood at 204 and the number of deportation orders issued was 238. The number of people removed was 67 in July.