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Ireland: government to amend Refugee Bill

01 January 1995

The new Irish government has decided not to let the Refugee Bill proposed by the Reynolds government go through unamended. Before the last government fell the Bill had reached the Committee stage in the Dail. The Bill was intended, at long last, to give legal effect to Ireland's obligations under the 1951 Geneva Convention and the 1967 protocol to that Convention. The stimulus for introducing it was the need to ratify and give effect to the Dublin Convention signed in 1990 - Ireland being one of the last EU member states to ratify it.

Among the measures groups like Amnesty International hope will be changed in the amended Bill are: the provision for the Refugee Board to make a decision on an application without interviewing the applicant; detention on the grounds that an applicant is in "possession of forged identity documents" (Amnesty say it is widely recognised that people fleeing for their lives are often forced to get false documents); the Refugee Applications Board which would have two department officials and one independent lawyer; and the incorporation the EU concept of "manifestly unfounded" applications which lacks sufficient safeguards.

Refugee Bill, 27.6.94; Explanatory memorandum; Position paper, Amnesty International, Dublin.