Pakistani nationals comprise nearly half of claims in Q1 of 2015

By Staff Reporter

The number of asylum seekers in Ireland has risen since the beginning of this year, according to the latest figures from Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Commission (EC).

In a statement, the EC said Ireland “received 625 first time applications for asylum in the first quarter of 2015, compared to 455 in the fourth quarter of 2014, an increase of almost 40 per cent. 

“42 per cent of these asylum applicants were from Pakistan, seven per cent were from Nigeria, while six per cent were from Albania.”

Across the European Union, the EC said there were 185,000 first-time requests for asylum in the first quarter of 2015 – “almost stable compared with the last quarter of 2014 but up by 86 per cent compared with the first quarter of 2014.”

At 26 per cent, Kosovars represented the largest share of first-time asylum applicants in the EU over the first quarter of 2015, ahead of Syrians (16%) and Afghans (7%).

During the first quarter of 2015, the highest numbers of first-time applicants were registered in Germany (73,100, or 40% of the EU total) and Hungary (32,800, or 18%). They were followed at a distance by Italy (15,200, or 8%), France (14,800, or 8%), Sweden (11,400, or 6%), Austria (9,700, or 5%) and the United Kingdom (7,300, or 4%). 

Ireland received 136 first-time asylum applications per million inhabitants in the first quarter of 2015, representing a 0.3% share of the EU total.

Compared with the population of each member state, the highest rates of registered first-time applicants during the first quarter of 2015 were recorded in Hungary (3,322), well ahead of Sweden (1,184), Austria (1,141) and Germany (905). 

In contrast, the lowest rates – fewer than 50 first-time applicants per million inhabitants – were observed in eleven member states: Croatia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland and Spain.