legal and social conditions for asylum seekers and refugees in ...

IRELAND
LEGAL CONDITIONS
The legal basis
– The Geneva Convention of 1951 and New York Protocol of 1967;
– The Aliens Act of 1935, as subsequently amended;
– The Irish Nationality and Citizenship Acts, 1956, 1986, and 1994;
– The Refugee Act of 1996 (from the date of entry into force of its different sections, see below);
– The Procedures for Processing Asylum Claims in Ireland of December 1997;
– The Immigration Act of June 1999 from its date of entry into force;
– The Dublin Convention.
The 1996 Refugee Act is not yet fully implemented, due to legal proceedings regarding some of
its provision and the fact that it was partly amended in 1999 to take account of the growth in
numbers of applications made in Ireland in recent years. At the time of writing (April 2000), only
five Sections of the 1996 Refugee Act have been implemented. These include, in particular,
Section 2, which extends the scope of the definition of a refugee in Article 1 of the Geneva
Convention, Section 5 which provides for the prohibition of refoulement, and Section 22 on the
implementation of the Dublin Convention.
In December 1997, in the absence of the full implementation of the Refugee Act, the government
replaced the existing texts by new Procedures for Processing Asylum Claims in Ireland. These
new Procedures (referred to as the Hanlan letter, as the procedures were first notified in a letter
to Ms Hope Hanlan, the UNHCR Representative) provide for, inter alia, a procedure for manifestly
unfounded applications, appeals against a decision to refuse refugee status and temporary leave
to remain. They will apply to all asylum applications submitted in Ireland until the Refugee Act is
fully implemented.
In January 1999, the High Court found that Section 5(1)(e) of the Aliens Act of 1935, from which
the power to issue deportation orders derives, was unconstitutional. This decision was later
upheld by the Supreme Court. In June 1999, the Immigration Act was passed by the Irish
Parliament with the purpose of re-enacting the Minister’s powers to deport non-nationals. The
1999 Immigration Act also provides for amendments to the 1996 Refugee Act.
Refugee Status
Convention status is the only refugee status granted in Ireland and Section 2 of the 1996 Refugee
Act contains the same definition of a refugee as Article 1A of the Geneva Convention.
However, according to Section 1 of the Refugee Act, membership of a social group should be
interpreted as including “(…) membership of a trade union and also [includes] membership of a
group of persons whose defining characteristic is their belonging to the female or the male sex or
having a particular sexual orientation”.
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Ireland