While the pace of the asylum process has picked up for many applicants, the services helping them to make their cases have lacked the resourcing to keep up
Spirasi, the national centre for survivors of torture, is “temporarily pausing” its “medico-legal” referral service, it has said in an email to asylum lawyers.
Solicitors used to refer clients who said they had endured physical or psychological torture to Spirasi to examine their wounds and issue findings in a medico-legal report.
That could be used as evidence in asylum cases.
“Due to current funding and capacity limitations within the service, we will be temporarily pausing medico-legal referrals from 29 May,” said the recent email from a Spirasi worker.
But it will continue to assess and offer “high-quality medico-legal reports” to "individuals currently on our waiting list”, it said.
The service for survivors of torture had already been under strain for years, with lengthy waiting lists. “It takes a very, very long time, many months,” said immigration solicitor Albert Llussà by phone, last week.
Some clients would only get reports in time for appeal applications, Llussà said. Others would miss even that deadline, he said.
The government has centred rhetoric around immigration in recent years on talk of “firmness” and “fairness”. But while the pace of the asylum process has picked up for many applicants, the services helping them to make their cases and tell their stories have lacked the resourcing to keep up.
That disconnect is likely to accelerate, too.
Processing asylum claims is set to speed up further under the EU’s Migration and Asylum pact, which is due to kick in – through a new domestic asylum law – on 12 June.
The suspension of Spirasi's medico-legal referral service will leave genuine victims of torture unseen and their trauma unrecognised, say Llussà and others.
A spokesperson for Spirasi hasn’t responded to queries sent on 25 May, including one asking about the suspension, whether it had requested more funding and when it could resume the service.
Spokespeople for the Department of Children and the HSE – who are listed among “funders and partners” on Spirasi’s website – said queries about funds for its medico-legal support should be sent to the Department of Justice.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice did not explicitly say it was funding the service or whether it had stopped, just that it’s aware of “Spirasi’s recent decision to pause referrals for medico-legal reports”.
“Department officials are engaging with Spirasi regarding potential future funding opportunities, and on the development of a new strategic plan for the organisation,” they said.
Spirasi, registered as Spiritan Asylum Services Initiative, was set up by the Congregation of the Holy Spirit (Spiritans) in the late 1990s.
“It was a response to the evolving migration and asylum situation in Ireland and was in line with the Spiritan charism of working with and for those who are oppressed or on the margins of society,” says the Spiritans’ website.
It’s now the national centre for survivors of torture, and its “remit is determined by the UN Convention Against Torture’s definition of torture”, it says.
The biggest chunk of Spirasi’s financial backing has come from the state, at least in the past decade, show records with the Charities Regulator.
But its government funding had shrunk from about €1.4 million in 2023 to just shy of €900,000 in 2024, the last period for which figures are publicly available.
Clíodhna Murphy, associate professor of law at Maynooth University, said an academic study that she co-authored found that in 2023, applicants with medico-legal reports had a much higher shot of success in their appeals.
They won 67.8 percent of the time, versus 30 percent on average across all cases.
Of course, a medico-legal report alone is not enough to win a case, she said, but it helps.
During the research, most participants noted that medico-legal reports were often not available for an initial asylum interview, Murphy said. That was a key problem, she said.
“Secondly, the lack of availability of medico-legal assessment throughout the system is a significant problem,” she said.
Drafting medico-legal reports, said Murphy, is a complex and lengthy process.
The service offering them needs adequate funding and sufficient time for doctors to carry out their assessments, she said. That was one of the findings of their research.
Llussà, the solicitor, said he didn’t know who was funding medico-legal assessments, but the service was invaluable, professional and independent – albeit slow and understaffed.
“They’re a fundamental part of the administration of justice in international protection claims,” he said.
Llussà worries about new clients arriving to seek sanctuary in the whirl of a new asylum regime in just a few days, he said. “The time limit would be drastically shorter, might be 12 weeks.”
Under the pact, at least on paper, the government has committed to process and close most asylum cases in three months.
Llussà doesn’t know of any other organisation like Spirasi, he said.
“The absence of, you know, reputable authoritative medico-legal reports may result in victims of torture being deprived of their right to be recognised as such,” he said.
Those seeking an alternative to Spirasi more likely have to turn to private medical professionals, Llussà said.
For those arriving from 12 June, who end up stuck at the state’s “screening centres” under new rules, that could be difficult.
Those “screening centres” are places where people seeking asylum are to undergo “further security, identity, health, and vulnerability checks”, said Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan, a Fianna Fáil TD, last month in the Dáil.
They’re set up under the International Protection Act 2026, which translates tenets of the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact.
O’Callaghan described who would be involved in these centres.
“The screening centre will have staff from asylum processing, appeals, returns, reception, HSE, Department of Social Protection, legal representatives, and other agencies co-located and engaging with applicants onsite,” he said.
The pact relaxes rules so that asylum seekers no longer have to get professional lawyers as legal representatives during the early stages of the asylum process. Now, others can act as “legal counsellors”.
Officials had explored the feasibility of using “chatbots” to offer legal counselling, documents show.
Understaffed and under pressure, the Legal Aid Board has struggled to assign lawyers to everyone in good time, in recent years.
Aisling Hearns, a psychotherapist specialising in complex trauma, steered Spirasi’s psychotherapy team for a decade, she said by phone recently.
It’s “devastating” that its medico-legal referral service has ceased for now, she said.
“They always struggled with waiting times, even when I was there, there was such high demand,” Hearns said.
Clients often “overwhelmingly meet the diagnosis for complex trauma”, Hearns said.
Some embody the “triple trauma paradigm”, she said. They carry wounds – “scarring, whip marks” – inflicted in places of birth and those collected on a perilous journey out, she said.
Here in Ireland, they could be undone by poor “reception conditions” or “racism”, said Hearns, or just struggle to feel at home again.
Those assessments and medico-legal reports are more than just sound evidence to support an asylum claim, said Hearns.
To see an official report that validates one’s pain is to emerge from the shadows of dismissal and feel seen, she said.
“There’s something very much about, you know, being believed and having that restorative justice piece as part of the healing,” Hearns said.
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