2326. Deputy Emer Currie asked the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration for an update on his Departments efforts to fulfil the Programme for Government commitments regarding migration; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [61683/26]

Delivering on the migration commitments laid out in the Programme for Government is a priority for me, for my colleague Minister of State Colm Brophy and also for my Department. We want to ensure that our immigration system is modern, efficient, and responsive to the needs of all of our people.

Last November, I was pleased to publish the Statement of Strategy for my Department for 2025–2028. The Strategy aligns with the Programme for Government, sets out my Department’s strategic direction to 2028 and will further the work towards our shared vision of a safe, fair and inclusive Ireland.

The Programme for Government contains a commitment to publish a National Migration and Integration Strategy detailing how Government intends to meet the demands and the opportunities facing Ireland’s society and economy over the next decade. My Department is currently working collaboratively with a wide range of other Government departments to develop this strategy with the aim to publish Ireland’s first overarching whole-of-government National Migration and Integration Strategy later this year.

In keeping with the Government commitment to significantly enhance the delivery of public services digitally, phase one of my Department's Immigration Customer Service Portal, which enables applicants to check their immigration application status, book first-time registration appointments, and submit queries, has been operational since October 2024.

I have been working closely with the Minister of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment to ensure that Ireland's legal employment pathways are as efficient and convenient as possible. My Department continues to work on the introduction of a single employment permit system. A detailed plan is being developed to unify processes and an implementation team is working to introduce a single permit. Once this is in place Ireland can seek to opt-in to the EU Single Permit Directive.

It is a central priority for me to ensure that our immigration system is robust and rules based.

As the Deputy will be aware, the International Protection Act 2026 entered into effect on 12 June 2026 and gave effect to the EU Migration and Asylum Pact. The Pact provides a fair, sustainable and efficient asylum procedure. This will be achieved through convergence in asylum practices across the EU including standardised processing times for decisions: six months for a standard procedure, three months for accelerated and border procedures and two months for processing applicants who have applied for protection elsewhere in Europe.

As part of these new measures a new international protection appeals body, the Tribunal for Asylum and Returns Appeals (TARA) was established on the 12 June which will process all appeals made under the International Protection 2026 Act. The establishment of TARA delivers on the Programme for Government commitment to ‘Replace the International Protection Appeals Tribunal with a new, faster appeals system’.

Faster processing will mean that applicants spend less time in International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS) accommodation, and this will significantly reduce the cost of the asylum system to the State. Faster decision-making will also mean that successful applicants will be granted international protection sooner, and those whose applications are refused can be returned to their country of origin sooner.

Alongside other reforms underway across the international protection system, the Programme for Government commits to reducing the use of commercially contracted international protection accommodation, and to providing more State-owned accommodation. The purchase of the Citywest Reception Centre in 2025 was an important step in this strategy, and increased State-owned beds to 4,000 in 2025, compared to 900 in early 2024. My Department is also taking action across all aspects of the international protection accommodation system to improve value for money, strengthen governance and compliance, and renegotiate contracts with providers.

My Department has taken action to significantly improve immigration enforcement measures and increase removals. This includes the renewed use of chartered deportation and removal flights. So far this year, 3,190 deportation orders have been signed and 1571 people have departed from the State under various mechanisms. The overall number of returns has increased by 11% for the same period in 2025 and the number of enforced deportations has increased by 22%.

The Border Management Unit (BMU) and An Garda Síochána have an ongoing intelligence-led programme of operations at airplanes to detect passengers who destroyed documents inflight and to identify the point of embarkation of undocumented passengers. Last year in 2024, the BMU have carried out over 7,300 doorstop operations at Dublin Airport. So far this year over, approximately 4,100 doorstop operations have been conducted by the BMU.

In addition to these ongoing operations, the Programme for Government commits to developing a border security strategy to deliver stronger border security, ensuring technology supports border screening and to reviewing the potential of extending pre-clearance mechanisms, such as electronic travel authorisation, for travel from designated third countries. This work is underway.

Since my appointment as Minister for Justice, I have had a number of engagements with the UK Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland where we discussed cooperation in respect of managing the Common Travel Area, and our shared objectives to provide for effective management of migration and border security. My Department chairs a Common Travel Area Forum (CTAF) with the UK Home Office which acts as a steering committee for the ongoing work of protecting the CTA in relation to free movement of its citizens between both countries while at the same time ensuring that the CTA is not abused by those not entitled to avail of it.