The International Protection Office (IPO) is to prioritise cases from the two countries with the highest number of applicants in the previous three months.

The move, announced by the Minister for Justice Helen McEntee, will now apply to cases from Nigeria and Jordan.

It extends a policy introduced in April, under which the IPO accelerated processing for arrivals from the country with the highest number of applicants over the previous three months.

EU pact requirements

The Department of Justice said that the move would further speed up the processing of international-protection applications, and enable the IPO to move towards the faster processing requirements of the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum.

Minister McEntee said that there had been a 53% drop in applications from Nigeria since it was brought into the accelerated process in April.

Accelerated processing for other categories was introduced in 2022, to cover ‘safe’ countries and applicants who had received protection elsewhere in Europe.

The department’s latest figures show the top five countries of origin for applications in the first half of 2024:

• Nigeria (2,999),
• Jordan (1,037),
• Pakistan (769),
• Somalia (664), and
• Bangladesh (649).

The total number of applications in the six-month period was 10,600.