\u201cHigh-quality information videos\u201d walk applicants through the initial asylum process, the Department of Justice has said. <\/p>\n
And \u201clegal clerks\u201d are available in drop-in clinics to answer specific questions, they said.<\/p>\n
That is a new practice under the International Protection Act 2026, which carried over tenets of the EU Migration and Asylum Pact. It went into force earlier this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The pact allows non-lawyers<\/a> to offer what it calls \u201clegal counselling\u201d early on as people fill out forms and get set up in the system.<\/p>\n Until a few years ago, people who came to Ireland and wanted to apply for asylum could pick up forms and seek a lawyer\u2019s help in completing them, because getting small stuff wrong can jeopardise their cases.<\/p>\n But as Ireland \u2013 and now the EU, through the pact \u2013 have sought to speed up the processing of asylum claims, and deportation of people whose claims have failed, applicants’ access to lawyers also diminished. \u00a0<\/p>\n The Legal Aid Board had struggled<\/a> to offer timely legal support to everyone under the previous asylum law in recent years as the Department of Justice sped up case processing for more people.<\/p>\n The Department of Justice and the Legal Aid Board had for the past several months been chugging away<\/a> on a plan to cope with the demands of new procedures under the pact. <\/p>\n Even as the state has become harsher with people seeking asylum, though, this has not calmed anti-immigrant groups, who are expressing outrage about the new law. Academics and politicians say that\u2019s because, for a small cohort, there\u2019s an existential risk in admitting to their audience that the rules have hardened.<\/p>\n \u201cThey need to double down. Their political platform relies on this,\u201d said Henrique Tavares Furtado, a senior lecturer in politics at the University of the West of England, Bristol.<\/p>\n New procedures<\/p>\n Legal counselling, said a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, is any \u201cguidance, explanation, information or assistance\u201d offered to applicants.\u00a0<\/p>\n The person offering it can be a Legal Aid Board staffer or a contractor for the board, \u201cwho is considered to be qualified by reason of knowledge, experience, qualifications, training, or expertise\u201d, they said.\u00a0<\/p>\n This practice has been criticised<\/a> both by lawyers and human rights organisations.\u00a0Among them, Fiona Hurley of migrants\u2019 rights non-profit NASC, has said that they are \u201cconcerned that the proposed concept of legal counselling will fall significantly short of legal advice or representation\u201d.<\/p>\n Legal counselling will be offered on-site<\/a> at Citywest \u201creception centre\u201d \u2014 formerly known as the transit centre\u2014in Saggart, a location that the government chose as a \u201cscreening centre\u201d for those who file sanctuary requests under a novel regime.\u00a0<\/p>\n Help with other stages of asylum seeking, after the initial application is filed, will be offered as normal by the Legal Aid Board, the spokesperson for the Department of Justice said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those arriving at the Citywest \u201cundergo screening\u201d there, but they aren\u2019t detained [there], said the Department of Justice spokesperson.\u00a0But their movement might be restricted, or they\u2019d need to present to immigration officers or Garda\u00ed, they said.<\/p>\n The new asylum law lays out the grounds<\/a> under which the state can hold some applicants in detention and \u201calternatives to detention\u201d.<\/p>\n Those include, among other things, trying to verify someone’s nationality or identity, pinning down details of an asylum claim when it’s not possible to do that without confining them or when someone has not shown up when asked by officials in the past and is likely to bounce, it says.<\/p>\n But it would keep any detention to a minimum and inform those detained of their right to legal representation, said the spokesperson for the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n After screening at Citywest, some people will be accommodated in restricted \u201casylum border procedure centres\u201d.\u00a0Their claims will be reviewed within three months, and if rejected, they should be deported within another three months, the government has said in the past<\/a>.<\/p>\n That can include those perceived to be a security threat, people from countries whose citizens\u2019 asylum cases have a success rate of lower than 20 percent in Europe and those who\u2019ve \u201cmisled authorities\u201d \u2013 like by showing up without their documents \u2013\u00a0 former Minister for Justice Fine Gael\u2019s Helen McEntee had said<\/a>.<\/p>\n Those not rerouted to the border procedure will be accommodated in asylum centres, as in the past. They can expect two different timeframes for an initial reply, said immigration barrister Cathal Malone.<\/p>\n If their cases are being \u201caccelerated\u201d, they can expect an initial ruling on their application within three months; if not, they can get a first reply within six months, he said. <\/p>\n The point of these rules, said the spokesperson for the Department of Justice, is to \u201censure that applicants are treated fairly and humanely while also ensuring the effective and efficient operation of our international protection system\u201d.<\/p>\n Lucky Khambule of the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland (MASI) said he hasn\u2019t yet heard from new applicants since the new procedures kicked in earlier this month and worries that their voices may not be heard.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hard to please<\/p>\n Even as these new procedures have come into effect under the EU Migration and Asylum Pact, anti-immigrant groups have rallied against them.<\/p>\n On 7 June, a few days before the pact kicked in, a new petition<\/a> against it appeared on Change.org.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s titled \u201cStop the EU Migration Pact in Ireland\u201d. As of Saturday, it had collected 1,850 signatures.<\/p>\n It says it was created by \u00dana Daly, one of several anti-immigrant influencers with a \u201cdigital creator\u201d badge stitched onto their profiles on Facebook \u2013 meaning their accounts are in \u201cprofessional mode\u201d and potentially monetisable.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Then, when anti-immigrant groups announced a protest in Dublin on the heels of racist rioting in Belfast on 9 June<\/a> \u2013 spawned by a stabbing attack over which a man from Sudan was charged with attempted murder<\/a>\u2013 an AI-generated poster<\/a> called for a \u201creferendum on migration pact\u201d as one of their demands.<\/p>\n Also, the political party Aont\u00fa has a petition <\/a>of its own against the pact \u2013 with a title similar to Daly\u2019s, and more than 65,000 signatories \u2013 and it has submitted a bill<\/a> to \u201cremove\u201d Ireland from the pact.<\/p>\n The party\u2019s petition says the new law doesn\u2019t address the border with the North. Under the pact, many people can still come, Aont\u00fa\u2019s petition said. It blames them for the shortage of affordable housing and school places.\u00a0<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t say what the pact does to the asylum process itself, and how it aims to fast-track both case processing and deportation for lots of people, just that it would bind Ireland \u201cto EU migration quotas\u201d.<\/p>\n However, the Minister for Justice, Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s Jim O\u2019Callaghan, has said<\/a> Ireland would pay \u20ac9.26 million next year to eschew those quotas imposed to support countries like Italy and Greece, where many people seeking asylum first arrive through the Mediterranean Sea.<\/p>\n Later, in a press release<\/a>, Aont\u00fa also criticised that plan, as a \u201csignificant cost\u201d to the country.\u00a0\u201cThe Pact is of significant threat to this country and it\u2019s wrong. It should be opposed even at this late stage,\u201d it said, quoting the party leader Peadar T\u00f3ib\u00edn.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Aont\u00fa has not yet responded to queries sent on Thursday evening, including one asking what it would do differently.<\/p>\n Changing for the season<\/p>\n Patrick Costello, former Green Party TD and its spokesperson on justice, said that, for major opponents, the focus is on protesting the harsher asylum policy by misrepresenting it without offering any real solutions.<\/p>\n That\u2019s frustrating, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people are opposed to the pact because it has been spun,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Furtado, at the University of the West of England, said\u00a0that, historically, meeting the demands of anti-immigrant hardliners has failed to satisfy them.<\/p>\n They can\u2019t admit that their agenda has become mainstream in the EU, and most countries in the zone have taken steps to please them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last week, some members of the European Parliament clapped and chanted<\/a> \u201csend them back\u201d after voting to formally adopt a new deportation law, which paves the way<\/a> for shuttling people to countries outside of the EU to which they have no connection.<\/p>\n Fine Gael MEPs Nina Carberry, Regina Doherty and Se\u00e1n Kelly, and Fianna F\u00e1il MEPs Barry Cowen, Billy Kelleher and Cynthia N\u00ed Mhurch\u00fa voted for the measure<\/a>. Doherty sent out a press release to make sure everyone knew she was going to vote for it.<\/p>\n Shortly before the vote, Maria Walsh, a Fine Gael MEP who voted against, posted a short video<\/a> explaining why she would oppose it.<\/p>\n This law, she said, among other things, would shuttle people to countries they’ve never set foot in to hold them in detention for lengthy periods, and there’s no promise that their human rights would be respected, she said. <\/p>\n \u201cThere is also a possibility that families with young children could be held in these centres too,\u201d said Walsh.<\/p>\n In the United States, the Trump administration is already doing this<\/a>. Sending some people from the US via Shannon Airport to third countries, with the Department of Foreign Affairs unwilling to release information about<\/a> the flights, and Garda\u00ed unwilling to inspect conditions on board<\/a>. <\/p>\n But anti-immigration extremists, \u201ccan\u2019t stop and say, no, [their agenda] has become part of the political establishment,\u201d Furtado said.<\/p>\n Doing that means losing either political relevance or revenue made from pushing polarising content online, he said.<\/p>\n